To detect repeat infections, CDC recommends that patients be retested for chlamydia and gonorrhea approximately three months after treatment for their initial infection, and that retesting be a priority for providers.
Any person who has a positive test for chlamydia or gonorrhea, along with women who have a positive test for trichomonas, should be rescreened 3 months after treatment.
Treatment for chlamydia
You can get a second test 6 weeks after your treatment to check that the infection has cleared. Once you've been diagnosed, you should not have any sex until 7 days after you have completed your treatment.
It is very common to have repeat infections of chlamydia. In the first few months following treatment for initial infection, as many as 1 in 5 people will experience reinfection.
Chlamydial infection occasionally persists due to treatment failure, but repeat positivity upon retesting is most often due to reinfection from an untreated sexual partner or an infected new partner [4, 5].
If you take your antibiotics correctly, you may not need to return to the clinic. However, you will be advised to go back for another chlamydia test if: you had sex before you and your partner finished treatment.
If you take the treatment according to the instructions, you won't usually need a test to check the chlamydia has gone. If you're aged under 25, you should be offered a repeat test 3 months after finishing the treatment. This is because you're at a higher risk of getting chlamydia again.
If given medicine to take for seven days, wait until you finish all the doses before having sex. If you've had chlamydia and took medicine in the past, you can still get it again. This can happen if you have sex without a condom with a person who has chlamydia.
The only way that chlamydia would stay in your body after you started treatment was if you didn't take all of the prescribed medicine. That's why it's important to take all of it, even if symptoms go away before you finish the medication.
If a person's symptoms continue for more than a few days after receiving treatment, he or she should return to a health care provider to be reevaluated. Repeat infection with chlamydia is common. Women whose sex partners have not been appropriately treated are at high risk for re-infection.
If you have chlamydia, you may be offered another test 3 to 6 months after being treated. This is because young adults who test positive for chlamydia are at increased risk of catching it again.
If left untreated, chlamydia can cause pelvic inflammatory disease in women, which can lead to chronic pain and infertility. In men, untreated chlamydia can cause pain and swelling in one or both testicles. If detected early, chlamydia may be treated with a single dose of antibiotics.
Once you begin antibiotic treatment, it can take one to three weeks for the chlamydia infection to resolve. However, asymptomatic infected people could have chlamydia for years, which may cause other serious complications and spread the infection to others.
Thankfully, it's also curable. But new research suggests that for some people, curing chlamydia doesn't prevent reinfection, even if they're not exposed to it again. Apparently the disease can live inside your gut, and reinfect you out of the blue.
If you have a new sexual partner and they have chlamydia, they can transmit it to you. You may become re-infected, even if you have had it before. Although the body develops antibodies to chlamydia, these antibodies don't stay in the body forever, which means that you can become infected again.
You and your sex partner(s) should also get tested again about three to four months following treatment to ensure that the chlamydia infection is no longer in your system.
Late-stage chlamydia refers to an infection that has spread to other parts of the body. For example, it may have spread to the cervix (cervicitis), testicular tubes (epididymitis), eyes (conjunctivitis), or throat (pharyngitis), causing inflammation and pain.
Chlamydial reinfections are very common—as many as 1 in 5 people will have a repeat infection with chlamydia within the first few months after they are treated for their initial infection.
Men and women who have been treated for chlamydia should be retested approximately 3 months after treatment, regardless of whether they believe their sex partners were treated; scheduling the follow-up visit at the time of treatment is encouraged (753).
However, a person can reacquire the infection, including during treatment. This often happens if someone has sex with a partner with an active chlamydia infection during treatment. Because of this, a person with chlamydia needs to advise all their sexual partners to receive testing for the infection.
It may take upwards of a year for most people to develop PID, but others can develop it earlier, depending on the severity of the infection.
At least once a year for syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. Those who have multiple or anonymous partners should be tested more frequently (e.g., every 3 to 6 months). At least once a year for HIV and may benefit from more frequent HIV testing (e.g., every 3 to 6 months).
If you're still experiencing symptoms, it's important to follow up with your healthcare provider. They can help to determine the cause of your symptoms and provide appropriate treatment if necessary. In rare cases, tests can have false negatives which can be a possible reason why you're still showing symptoms.
A delay in chlamydia and gonorrhea tests could be due to a lack of materials to sample. Some require the sample to get sent out to a second lab with more specialized equipment.