When a woman is diagnosed with chlamydia, clinicians often give her enough medicine to treat her own infection and recommend that her sex partner get tested and treated. According to a multi-center study, it would be more effective to give the woman medicine to treat her partner as well. Giving medicine to the woman to bring to her partner makes it easier for the partner to get treated. Based on those results, the San Francisco Office of Public Health changed the treatment policy in its clinics in 2000. Chlamydia trachomatis is a common sexually transmitted disease that may go undiagnosed in a man for years.
Women experience itching, burning and vaginal discharge, and often seek treatment.
If their partners are not also treated, says Dr. Kissinger, they will probably get reinfected. Untreated chlamydia can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility. The purpose of the study was to test the effectiveness of recommending partner referral in comparison to giving women additional oral azithromycin to give to their partners. A total of 1,828 women between 14 and 34 years old in seven U.S. cities were given treatment and randomly assigned to either a partner referral program or given the medicine for their partners. They were tested for reinfection at one and four months after their treatment.