Analysis for Chlamydia

Chlamydia is a disease of the urogenital tract, caused by an obligate microorganism chlamydia, which lives and multiplies primarily inside cells. This disease is a great danger, because Can for a long time not clinically manifest itself, but the risk of transmission of infection during sexual intercourse is not excluded.

Especially dangerous is the infection in pregnant women. The organism of the future mother is very susceptible to the action of various agents, and due to the fact that the immune system weakens, the carriage of chlamydia can pass into the acute clinical form of the disease.

Analysis of chlamydia in pregnancy is prescribed for all women without exception. If a woman has already undergone this diagnostic method in pre-marketing training, she does not need to do it again, provided she is healthy.

It must be understood that even the asymptomatic carriage of this microorganism can cause great harm to the future child. Chlamydia very often cause various malformations in babies, developmental defects, and in the early stages can cause a miscarriage. That's why the analysis on chlamydia is necessary for all women and men.

Of course, screening for chlamydia in women is not difficult. After all, most of the fair sex representatives are visited periodically by a gynecologist. Here, all women are taken a routine smear on the flora, which does not give a 100% guarantee of detecting chlamydia, but still will allow to suspect that something is wrong.

But with men it's harder. They can analyze chlamydia only in two cases: if the family is planning a child or a man has clinical signs of the disease. Preventive examinations most men do not pass.

As for the usual smear on microflora, these data should not be relied on. As mentioned above, they can only guide the doctor about an inflammatory process, if there is one. But if the chlamydia do not have any clinical manifestations, then the smear will be absolutely normal. That's why pregnant women are prescribed PCR diagnostics for chlamydia to identify all possible forms of the disease. If, of course, it is.

How do they take chlamydia?

Scraping of cells or smear is carried out. Chlamydia analysis by polymerase chain reaction, which is performed on the basis of the patient's biological material, is the main way to diagnose chlamydia. Most often, a scraping of the epithelial cells of the cervical canal or urethra is used for this (maybe both). However, you can check both sperm and discharge from the cervical canal and urethra, and also take a swab from the oropharynx. This is an inexpensive and simple way to diagnose this disease.

It is also possible to detect intracellular microorganisms by the immunofluorescence reaction, which is performed on a material taken from the cervical canal by scraping cells. The amount of material in this method must be taken sufficiently to determine the pathogen microbes more accurately. The efficiency is much lower than in PCR diagnostics, and is about 70%.

Analysis for chlamydia, for which only the patient's blood is needed - an enzyme immunoassay. This study is based on the determination of the presence of certain antibodies in the human blood that "tell" whether chlamydia is present in the body or whether the patient has previously suffered the disease.

There is also a cultural method for determining the presence of chlamydia. It is based on the sensitivity of these organisms to antibiotics. However, this kind of diagnostics is very expensive and time consuming, so it is practically not used at the moment.