An old #Sexually #Transmitted
#Disease is being passed over as new
You need to read this
A
little-known sexually transmitted disease that has attracted more attention
lately may actually be fairly common, according to a new study.
The study found that the bacterium Mycoplasma
genitalium, which is thought to be sexually transmitted, infects more than 1
percent of people ages 16 to 44 in the United Kingdom.
That
comes out to about 250,000 people, according to U.K. census data.
Studies
in the United States have found that a similar percentage of people here are
infected with M.genitalium.
That
makes M. genitalium a more common sexually transmitted disease (STD) than
gonorrhea, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [Hidden
STD Epidemic: 110 Million Infections in the US]
Here’s
what you need to know about Mycoplasma genitalium:
Is this a
new STD?
Some news outlets have described M. genitalium
as a “new” sexually transmitted infection, but the bacteria were first
discovered in 1980. At this time, researchers didn’t have the right types of
test to study M.genitalium, so the connection between M. genitalium and sexual
activity came a little later — around the mid-1990s, said Lisa Manhart, a
professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was
not involved in the new study, but has researched M. genitalium. For example,
early studies found that people who tested positive forM. genitalium often had
sexual partners who were infected with the disease as well.
The new
study adds to the evidence that M. genitalium is an STD, because it found that
the infection was more common in people who had at least four new sexual
partners in the past year than in people who had one or fewer new partners in
the past year.
In
addition, people were more likely to have M.genitalium if they had unprotected
sex, and no infections were found in people who had never had sex, according to
the study, which was published Nov. 3 in the International Journal of
Epidemiology.
What symptoms does it cause?
In men, the bacteria can cause inflammation of
the urethra (called urethritis) that leads to symptoms such as a burning pain
while urinating or discharge from the penis.
Whether M. genitalium causes disease in women is
less clear, but the bacteria have been linked to inflammation of the cervix
(cervicitis), as well as pelvic inflammatory disease, an infection of the
female reproductive organs that can lead to pain in the lower abdomen and pain
or bleeding during sex, according to the CDC.
In severe cases, pelvic inflammatory disease
can lead to infertility in women.
“Most of the research that’s going on now is
trying to better understand the implications of [M. genitalium] infection in
women,” Manhart said.
A recent
review study by Manhart and colleagues found that the risk of inflammation of
the cervix, pelvic inflammatory disease and preterm birth was about twice as
high in women with M. genitalium infection, compared to women without the
infection.
Still,
some researchers want to see more evidence before concluding that M. genitalium
does cause complications in women, Manhart said.
The new
study in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that about 94 percent
of men and 56 percent of women infected with M. genitalium did not have
symptoms.
Should
people be tested for it?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not
approved a test for M. genitalium, and doctors do not routinely test for the
bacteria, said Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt, a urologist at Orlando Health in Florida.
However,
doctors may consider testing for M. genitalium in patients who have persistent
symptoms after treatment for other sexually transmitted diseases that can cause
similar symptoms, said Brahmbhatt, who was not involved in the study but
treated people with M. genitaliuminfections.
More
research is needed to better understand how common M. genitalium is among
people in the U.S., and whether routine screening for the bacteria may be
warranted, he said.
Do you
need to treat it?
The antibiotics that are generally recommended
to treat urethritis, cervicitis and pelvic inflammatory disease are usually not
very effective against M. genitalium, Manhart said.
So
doctors might suspect that a patient has M. genitalium if he or she doesn’t get
better after taking the drugs typically used to treat these other STDs. Doctors
could then provide other antibiotics that are more effective against M.
genitalium, Manhart said.
Source: Sexually Transmitted Disease
Original article was published on Live Science.
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