What is Chlamydia Treatment?
Chlamydia treatment typically involves antibiotics, which can cure the chlamydial infection.
Treatment for chlamydia is simple, but it is vital that a person seek testing and treatment as soon as possible. It's important to avoid having any sexual activity during treatment, and also to inform your sex partners that you have chlamydia, so that they can begin chlamydia treatment as well.
What Are Chlamydia Complications?
If left untreated, chlamydia can progress to serious reproductive and other health problems, with both short-term and long-term consequences. It can cause serious problems in men and women (such as penile discharge and infertility, respectively), as well as in newborn babies of infected mothers.
Like the disease itself, the damage that chlamydia causes is often "silent."
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. Chlamydia also can cause discharge from the penis of an infected man.
U.S. Statistics on Chlamydia
Chlamydia is the most frequently reported bacterial STD in the United States. In 2002, 834,555 chlamydial infections were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 50 states and the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.). Under-reporting is substantial, because most people with chlamydia are not aware of their infections and do not seek testing. Also, testing is not often done if patients are treated for their symptoms. An estimated 2.8 million Americans are infected with chlamydia each year. Women are frequently reinfected if their sex partners are not treated.
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