Chlamydia Tag

01 Oct

Posted at 12:04h in Sexual Health, STD

Sexual Health Notice: This post is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Sexual health needs are individual — testing schedules, window periods, treatment options, and partner notification guidance vary depending on your specific situation, health history, and the infections involved. Consult a qualified healthcare provider, sexual health clinic, or public health service for personalized recommendations regarding STI testing, diagnosis, treatment, or any other sexual health concern.

For tens of thousands of years, Homo sapiens have shared pathogens through intimate contact. It is a fundamental, ancient biological reality of our species. When bodies touch, microscopic ecosystems inevitably collide and exchange microorganisms. Yet, as our societies grew more complex, we invented a powerful, invisible fiction to surround this basic biological reality: social shame.

We often fear the judgement of the tribe far more than we fear a microscopic virus. This fear of reputational damage drives entirely rational people into hiding when their bodies sound a medical alarm.

If you are searching for anonymous std testing in Singapore clinics, you are trying to navigate this ancient conflict. You want to protect your health without damaging your social standing.

[caption id="attachment_76399" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Reality Behind Human Shame Photo by Sanket Mishra[/caption]

28 Sep

Posted at 12:35h in Sexual Health

Notice: This post is provided for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Sexual health needs are individual — testing schedules, window periods, treatment options, and partner notification guidance vary depending on your specific situation, health history, and the infections involved. Consult a qualified healthcare provider, sexual health clinic, or public health service for personalized recommendations regarding STI testing, diagnosis, treatment, or any other sexual health concern.

An anonymous STI text service can turn a difficult conversation into a message. Yet many people still put off testing — and never tell a partner about a result. It is not that people do not care. Silence feels safer than awkwardness. But that silence has a cost: infections that a short course of treatment could cure keep spreading from one person to the next. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), sexually transmitted infections remain among the most common reportable conditions in the United States, with many cases going undetected and untreated because people experience no symptoms and are never tested. Here is why sexual health communication matters and how to make it easier.

[caption id="attachment_76278" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-couple-holding-hands-and-condom-6777799/ Photo by cottonbro studio

19 May

Posted at 16:52h in Author Interviews, JAMA, STD
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: [caption id="attachment_54214" align="alignleft" width="154"]Barbara Van Der Pol, PhD, MPH President, American STD Association President-Elect, International Society fo STD Research Professor of Medicine & Public Health Director, STD Diagnostics Lab Director, UAB STD Clinical Research Organization University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL  35294 Dr. Van der Pol[/caption] Barbara Van Der Pol, PhD, MPH President, American STD Association President-Elect, International Society fo STD Research Professor of Medicine & Public Health Director, STD Diagnostics Lab Director, UAB STD Clinical Research Organization University of Alabama at Birmingham Birmingham, AL  35294 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: For many decades, public health programs focused on control and prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STI) have relied on lab based tests that required a 1-day to 1-week wait for test results.  Efforts to shorten the duration of infection lead to treating at the time of the clinic visit based on the association between certain clinical signs or symptoms and the likelihood of infection. Unfortunately, more than ½ of infected persons do not have signs or symptoms so they receive no treatment until test results are available. Thus, a test that could be performed at the clinical site with a limited wait time would improve the accuracy of treatment and shorten the duration of infection. Such a strategy will hopefully reduce the number of return clinic visits, the possibility of transmission, and the potential for consequences of untreated infection such as infertility. 

18 Jan

Posted at 18:25h in Author Interviews, PLoS, Sexual Health
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Matthew Golden MD, MPH Director, PHSKC HIV/STD Program Professor of Medicine, University of Washington Harborview Medical Center Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Golden: Gonorrhea and chlamydial infection are the most common reportable infections in the United States and, in women, are associated with pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, infertility and chronic pelvic pain. One way to decrease the number of cases of gonorrhea and chlamydia is to increase our success in treating the sex partners of persons diagnosed with these infections. Expedited partner therapy (EPT) - treating partners without requiring them to first undergo a medical evaluation - is one way to increase partner treatment. This usually involves giving people medication to give to their partners. Prior randomized trials have found that EPT decreases patients' risk of becoming reinfected. We conducted a community-level randomized trial to evaluate whether making free Expedited partner therapy available to medical providers would increase the use of Expedited Partner Therapy and decrease gonorrhea and chlamydial infections at the population level. We found that a public health program that made Expedited partner therapy widely available could dramatically increase medical providers use of EPT. Although our final result was not statistically significant, our findings suggest that the program likely decreased both gonorrhea and chlamydial infection by about 10% at the population-level.