Chlamydia symptoms can be subtle and don’t usually show up until 1 to 3 weeks after sexual contact. Infected people may have a watery or abnormal discharge from their vagina or penis, or pain while urinating.
The infection can affect women’s cervix, fallopian tubes and urine canal (the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the outside of the body). Untreated cervical infections can spread upwards, causing pelvic inflammatory disease in women. This is a serious illness that can cause long-term pelvic pain, infertility and potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the uterus).
In men, chlamydia can lead to epidydimitis – inflammation of the area near the testicles – which may cause pain, fever and sometimes prevent them from being able to father children. Infection can also spread to the tube that carries sperm from the testes, causing pain and scarring and reducing sperm counts.
A person who has chlamydia can pass it on to another person through unprotected oral, vaginal or anal sex. The bacteria can travel from the mouth of one partner to the penis, vagina or anus of another through sex involving toys, manual stimulation of the genitals, rubbing the throat or inhaling a droplet that someone coughed or sneezed out.
Symptoms of chlamydia can vary in women and men, but they include a painful or hard urination that doesn’t seem to clear up by itself. Some people also have blood in their urine or are very tired.
Treatment of chlamydia involves taking antibiotics that are prescribed by your doctor to kill the chlamydia bacteria and help stop the infection from spreading again. Antibiotics are usually given as pills and should be taken for at least 7 days or more to get rid of the infection completely.
The most common way chlamydia spreads from person to person is through unprotected oral, vaginal and anal sex. If you have a lot of unprotected sex, or have had a high number of partners in the past 6 months, you should get tested for chlamydia and all your new sexual partners should be offered the test as well.
If you have chlamydia, don’t have sex until one week after your treatment has finished and you and your new sexual partner have been tested for the infection. You should also tell your sex partners you have had the chlamydia test so that they can be tested too.
It is important to remember that chlamydia can reoccur and you need to take your antibiotics every week for at least seven days to make sure it doesn’t come back. You should also get a repeat test and see your doctor as soon as possible to be sure you’re free of the infection.
A child born to an infected mother can develop chlamydia and pneumonia during delivery, increasing their chances of getting or giving HIV/AIDS to the baby. The babe may also be born prematurely, with complications that can include eye infections and pneumonia.
