'Cured' Chlamydia: STD may Reemerge, According to Study

Statistics show that chlamydia is the most commonly reported STD in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And unfortunately, a recent study shows that for those who are infected, they can still be re-exposed to the disease-causing bacteria even after treatments have ended.

According to researchers from the Arkansas Children's Research Institute, scientists demonstrated how the infection could reoccur even after mice in the study had undergone treatments to cure the health issue. 

"We propose that women, cured of genital infection, remain at risk for auto-inoculation from the lower gastrointestinal tract," notes Roger Rank, the study's lead, via a press release. "It is possible that women, cured of genital infection by antibiotics, remain infected in the gastrointestinal tract and can become reinfected by auto-inoculation from that site."

Background information from the study shows that almost 26 percent of those infected with chlamydia will end up with a reinfection of the medical problem. The CDC even notes that "chlamydia reinfection is common even when individuals are properly diagnosed and treated, because of untreated infection in their sexual partners."

As the bacteria that causes the disease can lie dormant for years without causing symptoms, this is one the reasons that causes high infection rates and why many cases of it often go undetected or untreated. Statistics also show that GI infection is most likely to occur when chlamydia is transmitted via oral or anal sex.

Rank states, via the release, that there have been cases of chlamydia treatment failures, but it's possible that it's reinfection from a persisting disease.

"In a small percentage of recurrent infections, infection cannot be attributed to reinfection from a partner or treatment failure; so it would appear that in these cases, the organism has remained persistent in the individual," he writes, via the release. "Based on the studies in animals and the experimental mouse model studies and evidence for gastrointestinal infection in humans, we propose that chlamydiae shed in the GI tract may infect the genital tract via auto-inoculation."

Previous findings suggest that women may be more susceptible to reoccurring infections that can happen even when study participants had not had sexual intercourse between doctor's visits, which Rank believes may be due to antibiotic resistance or reinfection.

However, he also adds that at this time, further tests on human subjects need to be conducted in order to further determine the validity of the study's results.

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Infection and Immunity.