Chlamydia trachomatis
Chlamydia trachomatis
Characteristics
- Obligate intracellual pathogen
Reservoirs
- Humans (only reservoir, not normal flora)
Transmission
- Direct contact
- Sexual
- Perinatal
Toxins
- LPS
Diseases
- In Males
- Most common cause of non-gonococcal urethritis.
- Prostatitis and epididymitis.
- In Females
- Most common cause of non-gonococcal urethritis and cervicitis
- Pelvic inflammatory disease, tuboovarian abscesses, ectopic pregnancies and infertility
- In Both Males and Females
- Trachoma (“follicular keratoconjunctivitis”) and blindness
- Lymphogranuloma venerum (painless ulcer at the site of initial
- Infection and local lymphadenitis), rectal stricture and elephantiasis
- Reiter’s syndrome (septic oligoarthritis of the large joints)
- Septicemia
- In Neonates
- Conjunctivitis and blindness
- Neonatal interstitial penumonitis
Treatment
- Tetracyclines in conjunction with third generation cephalosporins
- (if non-gonococcal urethritis and/or cervicitis, due to the possibility that the urethritis and/or cervicitis may be of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and/or Ureaplasma urealyticum origin)
- Tetracyclines (if trachoma and/or conjunctivitis)
- Macrolides (if neonatal interstitial pneumonitis)