A prevalence study of Chlamydia infections in Turkish population

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

A prevalence study of Chlamydia infections in Turkish population

Şükran Köse^I; Gürsel Ersan^I; Süheya Serin Sender^I; Ilker Devrim^II,*; Mehmet Murat Inal^III

^IDepartment of Infectious Diseases and Clinic Microbiology Tepecik, Training and Research Hospital, Turkey

^IIDepartment of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Dr. Behcet Uz Children's Training Research Hospital, Ministry of Health, Turkey

^IIIAegean Obstetrics and Gynecology Teaching Hospital, Izmir, Turkey

Dear Editor,

The most common sexually transmitted disease (STD) is caused by Chlamydia trachomatis. Screening of different populations of women have shown prevalence rates of C. trachomatis of 1-25%.¹C. trachomatis infections were associated with mucopurulent, cervicitis, endometritis, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), salpingitis, postabortal pelvic sepsis and perihepatitis and long-term complications of PID, infertility and ectopic pregnancy.²

Several risk factors were reported to be associated with C. trachomatis infections such as: age, sex, family status, education, ethnic status, initial age of sexual activity, number of sexual partners, oral contraceptives, or an intrauterine device, smoking, drug addiction had been reported as risk factors of infections.³

The women who were admitted to Family Planning Department during the period from March 2003 to August 2004 were included in this study. In our study enrolment criteria were age older than 17 years; no previous history of gynecological operation. The patients who fulfilled the criteria were included in the study.

Prior to enrollment, in the study, an informed consent was obtained from the patients and the study was approved by local ethical committee. All the patients were face to face interviewed and cervical smears and swabs for Chlamydial DNA study were obtained from all cases. Data were expressed as mean standard deviation and SPSS statistical software package (SPSS, version 12 for Windows; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for statistical analyses.

The mean age of 1353 cases was 34.69 ± 8.16 years (ranging from 17 to 73 years). The overall Chlamydial-DNA positivity was 2.66% (36 cases) for C . trachomatis. Age, partner's age (p = 0.38), marriage duration (p = 0.81), frequency of sexual intercourse (p = 0.26), number of birth (p = 0.36), parity (p = 0.51), history of abortion (p = 0.31) and curettage (p = 0.34) revealed no statistically significant difference between the Chlamydi a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive and negative groups (Table 1). Presence of pathologic vaginal discharge and vaginal pH were not statistically associated with Chlamydial positivity.

The rate of Chlamydi a DNA positivity was 2.6% in our study which was relatively low compared to the Turkish data.⁴ Studies from different geographic regions of world reported different ratios such as ranging from 0.8 to 14%.⁵ In addition to age, different from the literature, the partner's age, marriage duration, frequency of sexual intercourse, contraception method use, occupation of the cases and their partners together with the educational levels of cases, number of gravida, parity, abortion and curettage of the cases revealed no statistically significant difference between the Chlamydi a positive and negative groups.

In conclusion, in our study Chlamydi a prevalence of Turkish population was found to be similar to other countries. Regarding its high risk of developing sequela; effective screening programmes for Chlamydi a infections and their long term adverse effects such as PID; ectopic pregnancy, infertility are essential.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Received 12 July 2012

Accepted 25 July 2012

Available online 5 January 2013

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• 2. Peipert JF. Clinical practice. Genital chlamydial infections. N Engl J Med. 2003;349:2424-30.
• 3. Menéndez C, Castellsagué X, Renom M, et al. Prevalence and risk factors of sexually transmitted infections and cervical neoplasia in women from a rural area of southern Mozambique. Infect Dis Obstet Gynecol. 2010;2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2010/609315, pii: 609315 [Epub 2010 Jul 11]
• 4. Ozdağ D, Us D, Demirezen S, Beksaç S. Investigation of Chlamydia trachomatis positivity in women with and without gynecologic complaints by cytologic and direct immunofluorescence methods. Mikrobiyol Bul. 2007;41: 51-61.
• 5. Van Der Pol B, Quinn TC, Gaydos CA, et al. Multicenter evaluation of the Amplicor and automated Cobas Amplicor CT/NG tests for the detection of Chlamydia trachomatis J Clin Microbiol. 2000;38:1105-12.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Feb 2013
• Date of issue
  Feb 2013