Chlamydia and you!
In an effort to better educate about the dangers of not knowing if your partner has a healthy crotch, I will be doing my best to put out a series of articles from the new 2009 STD CDC Surveillance Report. If you have a school project or a vested interest in the sexual health of others, you should definitely check out the link.  Oh and don’t worry it’s not all bad news – we’ve actually had some STD rates go down!
First up we will look at Chlamydia. According to www.urbandictionary.com ; “Chlamydia is a common sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterium, Chlamydia trachomatis, which can damage a woman’s reproductive organs. Even though symptoms of Chlamydia are usually mild or absent, serious complications that cause irreversible damage, including infertility, can occur “silently” before a woman ever recognizes a problem.” That definition is good enough for me. First let’s check and make sure Chlamydia is still a problem: (Only pay attention to the dotted blue line for now)
Alright, so now we know the rates are going up…next up, let’s take a look at where in the U.S. Chlamydia is hitting the hardest: (The darker the blue, the more Chlamydia in that area)
Fuck! It’s like beating a dead horse, sticking your fingers in your ears and going “LALALALALA” when someone tries to get condoms into schools isn’t working. You also can’t tell people to abstain from sex until marriage and withhold information about safe sex, condoms, etc. and expect people to do what you say when it concerns their dicks and va-jay-jays. Well, maybe it’s not the young people getting it, right? (Last chart, I promise!)
Holy crap! Nearly 600 women for every 100,000 have Chlamydia? Almost 3x times the rate in men? What the hell is wrong with you sluts?!  But in all seriousness, this is quite disturbing, especially the 15 – 29 age ranges. One of the reasons for such a high infection rate in those under 30 is no use of prophylactic devices. In addition, re-infection with Chlamydia can occur since you can get rid of it with some powerful antibiotics, however there is no immunity following the infection and a person may become repeatedly infected.
Another reason for such high infection rates is symptoms of Chlamydia don’t show up in 25 – 30% of those who get it, so they can go on having sexual relations and spreading it without even knowing.
The mainstay of therapy for Chlamydia includes appropriate antibiotic treatment. You can get Chlamydia as a co-infection with gonorrhea or syphilis. Sexual partners must be treated to prevent passing the infection back and forth.
The Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine recommends a screening test for Chlamydia each year for:
- Sexually active women age 25 and younger
- Women over age 25 who have new or multiple sex partners
The CDC had this to say on Chlamydia’s apparent increased rates: “Continuing increases in chlamydia diagnoses likely reflect expanded screening efforts, and not necessarily a true increase in disease burden; this means that more people are protecting their health by getting tested and being linked to treatment. This is critical, since chlamydia is one of the most widespread STDs in the United States.” So the rates have always been as high as we are seeing, just that more people are getting with it and getting treated. This is a good thing.
Overall, the STD threat level of Chlamydia is:
Likelihood: ****
Deadliness: *
Well, I hope you learned something today. Remember; healthy genitals are happy genitals!
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