The Bacterium
Organisms belonging to Chlamydia’s phylum must live inside eukaryote’s cells. Therefore, they’re intracellular parasites.
Clinical manifestations
Chlamydia trachomatis’s infection appears mostly in cervicitis and uteritis. However, symptomatology can be soft or even absent and complications, which can take irreversible damages or infertility, can appear before the identification of the etiological agent.
Infections which occur outside the urogenital tract provoke pneumonia and conjunctivitis in infants and conjunctivitis and arthritis in adults. In Third World lands it’s the most important cause for what regards blindness.
Epidemiology
Chlamydia trachomatis’s infection is considered as the most frequent sexual communicable disease in industrialized lands. Healthy carriers (even in throat) are considered the most important “reservoir” of the germ. The Chlamydia trachomatis can be transmitted via sexual (vaginal, anal) and oral contacts. Every sexually active person can be infected by Chlamydia trachomatis. It can even be transmitted from an infected mother to the child during the childbirth.
The Chlamydia trachomatis has a marked tropism for genital and ocular epithelium. For what regards the highlight of the germ, it’s important to extract cells, because it is an intracellular parasite.
Test
The amplification by means of PCR of the cryptic plasmid’s region allows to get good results in short duration.
Sample taking
Eye’s smear, urethra’s and cervical’ smear, articular dotted, urine, ejaculated.
