Chlamydia testing

Good news are here; a new urine test has been developed with funding from the Wellcome Trust to allow doctors to diagnose Chlamydia infection in men within the hour.

The new Chlamydia test will improve the ability to successfully treat the infection quickly and prevent re-transmission. This is a very important development because until now men testing for Chlamydia had to undergo very uncomfortable urethral swabs which deterred many men from being tested. In turn this was a cause for men going untreated and passing the disease on to their partners with more serious complications.

Testing for chlamydia

The Chlamydia Rapid Test, a urine test developed by Dr Helen Lee and colleagues at Diagnostics for the Real World (DRW) and the University of Cambridge, can be used with minimal training.

The Chlamydia Rapid Test has received regulatory approval and is on the market in France, where it is used in clinics, and will shortly come onto the market in Spain, Portugal, Italy and a number of other European countries.  Testing for chlamydia has never been easier.

Chlamydia is a STD caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis.  It is the most common sexually-transmitted bacterial infection in the UK.  The bacteria mainly infect the genitals but it can sometimes infect the throat and rectum. 

In the majority of cases, there are not obvious symptoms. If symptoms show, they may include discharge or pain when passing urine, pain in the testicles and pain in, or discharge from, the rectum.

• In England, as many as 68 young men in every 1,000 carry the infection.

• In England since the mid-1990s, the number of diagnosed infections has raised an average of 7,500 per year to over 123,000.

• In the USA Chlamydia is the most frequently reported bacterial STD. In 2006, 1,030,911 Chlamydial infections were reported to CDC from 50 states and the District of Columbia.

• An estimated 2,291,000 non-institutionalized U.S. civilians ages 14-39 are infected with Chlamydia based on the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Chlamydia can be treated easily with a one-off antibiotic pill.  If you are treated for Chlamydia you must make sure that your partner is also treated, to avoid getting infected again. During treatment you should avoid sexual intercourse to avoid re-infection.