Screening for Chlamydia trachomatis Infection in a Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic
- 1 January 1988
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wolters Kluwer Health in Sexually Transmitted Diseases
- Vol. 15 (1), 51-57
- https://doi.org/10.1097/00007435-198801000-00012
Abstract
Of 212 consecutive male patients and 212 consecutive female patients attending a sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic, 36 (17%) men and 28 (13%) women had urethral or cervical cultures positive for Chlamydia trachomatis. When compared with culture, the direct fluorescent antibody test (Micro Trak, Syva Co., Palo Alto, CA) had a sensitivity of 75% and a specificity of 97% in men; for women the sensitivity and specificity were 68% and 82%, respectively. One percent of test slides from men and 11% of slides from women were uninterpretable. Designation of high-risk patients for presumptive treatment, i.e., those with suggestive clinical syndromes, gonococcal infection, or exposure to others considered at high risk for chlamydial infection, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, proved to be 94% sensitive, 22% specific in men, and 82% sensitive, 35% specific in women when compared with results of culture. Three different screening methods using mucopurulent cervicitis, a cervicitis score, and a series of key risk factors were less sensitive than presumptive treatment and performed worse in our study than in those published previously. Our findings suggest that use of presumptive treatment guidelines appears to be effective in directing treatment to STD clinic patients with chlamydial infection.This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cost-Effectiveness of Culturing for Chlamydia trachomatisAnnals of Internal Medicine, 1986
- Criteria for selective screening for Chlamydia trachomatis infection in women attending family planning clinicsJAMA, 1986
- Evaluation of chlamydiazyme for the detection of genital infections caused by Chlamydia trachomatisJournal of Clinical Microbiology, 1986
- Comparison of monoclonal antibody staining and culture in diagnosing cervical chlamydial infectionJournal of Clinical Microbiology, 1986
- Cervical Chlamydia trachomatis infection in university women: Relationship to history, contraception, ectopy, and cervicitisAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1985
- Diagnosis ofChlamydia trachomatisInfections by Direct Immunofluorescence Staining of Genital SecretionsAnnals of Internal Medicine, 1984
- Mucopurulent Cervicitis — The Ignored Counterpart in Women of Urethritis in MenNew England Journal of Medicine, 1984
- Culture-Independent Diagnosis ofChlamydia trachomatisUsing Monoclonal AntibodiesNew England Journal of Medicine, 1984
- Detection of Chlamydia trachomatis inclusions in Mccoy cell cultures with fluorescein-conjugated monoclonal antibodiesJournal of Clinical Microbiology, 1983
- Chlamydia trachomatis cervical infections in female adolescentsThe Journal of Pediatrics, 1981