LONDON (Reuters)
- Sexually active women aged up to 25 should be screened every
six months for chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that
can cause infertility, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.
Scientists
at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta,
Georgia, said the illness was four times more common in young
women. They are also infected quicker than women over 25 years
old.
"We found
the chlamydia incidence rate for females less than 25 years old
to be more than five times greater than in women more than 25
years old and the median time to diagnosis of incident infection
to be approximately half," Dr. Gale Burstein said in the
research published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Speaking in
a telephone interview with Reuters, Bursetin said Chlamydia was
a very big problem for women. "For sexually active females
to be able to diagnose and treat new infections we recommend screening
every six months," she said.
Chlamydia
is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases and the
most preventable causes of serious gynecological problems.
It affects
about three million women in the United States and in many cases
there are no symptoms. The disease can cause pelvic pain, inflammation
of the Fallopian tube, infertility and increased risk of ectopic
pregnancy and HIV infection.
It is treatable
with antibiotics.
DNA AMPLIFICATION
TEST
The researchers
tested 4,000 sexually active women between the ages of 12-60 who
attended health centers in Baltimore, Maryland, for 33 months.
Almost one in three below the age of 25 had chlamydia compared
with fewer than one in 10 in older age groups.
Young women
were also nine times as likely to be diagnosed with the infection
more than once during the study period.
The researchers
recommended that young women be tested regularly with a sensitive
DNA amplification test.
Burstein said
biological and behavioral causes made young women more vulnerable
to chlamydia.
Chlamydia
is not as serious in men as it is in women. So far there is no
clear evidence to suggest that chlamydia infection in males is
involved in infertility.
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