What are the symptoms? Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
Symptoms can develop within a few days or weeks, but sometimes they do not appear until months or even years later.
Leaving a chlamydia infection untreated for years increases the risk of developing serious complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and further infections. For women, PID can cause: scar tissue that blocks fallopian tubes. ectopic pregnancy.
Most people who have chlamydia don't notice any symptoms.
If you do get symptoms, these usually appear between 1 and 3 weeks after having unprotected sex with an infected person. For some people they don't develop until many months later. Sometimes the symptoms can disappear after a few days.
If untreated, chlamydia can spread into the uterus or fallopian tubes and cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), a serious infection of the reproductive organs. PID can cause damage in your fallopian tubes.
There is no clear timeline on how long it may take for this to occur - while one study suggests that after exposure to the bacteria, it can take a few weeks for PID to develop, the NHS estimates that 1 in 10 women with untreated chlamydia could go on to develop PID within a year.
Without medical intervention, a chlamydia infection can persist for years if gone unnoticed [1]. Fortunately, once diagnosed, a healthcare provider can provide patients with the right medication to treat the sexually transmitted infection (STI).
On the other hand, if you don't get tested or don't see a healthcare provider for treatment, chlamydia can live in the body for weeks, months, or even years without being detected. This can lead to long-term complications, including infertility.
Although chlamydia is highly contagious, it does not always transmit to a person's sexual partners. It is also possible to have a false-negative test result. Having more frequent sex with a partner who has chlamydia may increase a person's risk of contracting it.
It can take from weeks to two years. Chlamydia can lead to infertility in women due to the amount of scarring it causes to their internal reproductive organs. If you have had unprotected sex and not had a chlamydia test, you should get tested before trying to start a family.
While long-term problems in men are rare, some men with untreated chlamydia may develop epididymitis. This refers to inflammation in the epididymis, a coiled tube at the back of the testicles that is responsible for storing and carrying sperm.
Apparently the disease can live inside your gut, and reinfect you out of the blue. Apparently doctors have known that chlamydia can reappear in cured patients for about 80 years, but they've been stumped as to how exactly it happens.
Several of the more than 20 types of STDs can lie dormant for months, years, or even decades. Dormant STDs and STIs highlight the importance of sexual health testing, as only a test can determine if an asymptomatic infection is present.
This leads us to our question of the day –– can chlamydia be dormant and undetected? There are two parts to the answer. First, yes, chlamydia can lie unnoticed for long periods of time. However, even if chlamydia remains asymptomatic, tests can still detect its presence.
A urinalysis can give clues to the presence of sexually transmitted infections. A positive dipstick for leukocyte esterase or increased numbers of white blood cells in the microscopic exam is suggestive of chlamydia or gonoccocal infection.
They can only be spread sexually. HIV, herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and genital warts may not develop symptoms for quite a while, if ever. It's possible to become infected in one relationship yet develop no symptoms until involved in a subsequent relationship that's monogamous.
It's quite another to learn you have an STI while you're in a monogamous relationship. If you have been totally faithful, you may assume that your partner acquired the infection while being unfaithful. Though it's possible they may have been intimate with someone else, it's also possible they never cheated at all.
An untreated chlamydia infection can persist for several years. Although this goes for both men and women, it is believed that men are less likely to carry the bacteria for several years. If you remain infected for a long time you have an increased risk of complications.
Finding out whether you have had the infection in the past is trickier - the bacterium will probably disappear from your system within a year. However the disease may have left scars - and a doctor will be able to pick those up.
If chlamydia is left untreated, it can damage a woman's reproductive organs. The infection can spread into the uterus or fallopian tubes and cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). This happens in about 10 to 15 percent of women with untreated chlamydia.
Chlamydia can be cured with antibiotics from a health care provider. However, if chlamydia is left untreated, it can cause permanent damage. Your risk of getting other STIs, like gonorrhea or HIV, increases. In males, untreated chlamydia can lead to sterility (inability to make sperm).
Even without symptoms, the disease can cause complications, particularly infertility. The longer the infection is untreated, the more damage that can be done. If symptoms do show up, they usually occur within weeks of exposure. Men and women may face painful urination, an abnormal discharge from the urethra, or both.
Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
Cloudy urine. Abnormal vaginal discharge. Abnormal vaginal bleeding with intercourse or between periods.