Are you wondering if there is a Chlamydia Cure? Do you want to know how to treat chlamydia, what are chlamydia tests or what are chlamydia symptoms? Continue reading or browse our site to find more information about chlamydia.
Chlamydia Cure? Chlamydia Treatment in Adults
Though tetracycline has long been considered the drug of choice for treating chlamydial infections, it has been supplanted by doxycycline. Doxycycline can be taken with food twice daily rather than four times daily as is required for tetracycline thereby significantly improving compliance. Furthermore, generic doxycycline is now as cheap as tetracycline.
Therefore, the 1993 CDC Treatment Guidelines no longer list tetracycline as a recommended regimen. Minocycline has proven to be equally as effective as doxycycline and has the advantage of twice daily dosing as well. However, this drug has not been used extensively, probably because it has been reported to occasionally cause reversible inner ear toxicity.
The tetracyclines should be avoided in pregnant women and in children under 9 years old because of their tooth-staining effect. Pregnant women may have difficulty tolerating erythromycin at the recommended doses, particularly during the first trimester. Alternative drugs in this circumstance are sulfisoxazole and amoxicillin. The former should be avoided near the time of delivery, since the sulfonamides interfere with bilirubin binding to albumin in neonates.
Recent studies have shown that contrary to older concepts, b-lactam drugs of the penicillin class are effective against Chlamydia trachomatis. Crombleholme et al. recently showed that amoxicillin 500 mg p.o., t.i.d. for 7days, is effective for chlamydial infections in pregnant women. Despite the potential usefulness of penicillins, it should be clearly understood that b-lactam antibiotics of the cephalosporin class have absolutely no effect on Chlamydia trachomatis.
It has recently been shown that the new macrolide – like antibiotic, azithromycin, is effective in a single, 1 g oral dose for uncomplicated chlamydial infections in both men and women. The importance of this development is that compliance with the treatment regimen can be guaranteed by administering the drug in the presence of the healthcare provider, as is currently the case with gonorrhea and syphilis. The major limitation of azithromycin is its high cost as compared to that of generic doxycycline and erythromycin.
Additionally, azithromycin has not yet been studied for the treatment of PID or for chlamydial infection during pregnancy. The new quinolone antibiotics have been studied extensively for the treatment of chlamydial infections. Of those currently available in the United States, only ofloxacin has proven effective. However, ofloxacin has no advantage over doxycycline in terms of its dosing regimen, and its drawbacks are the contraindications to its use in pregnancy, as well as for teenagers under 17 years of age, since animal model studies have demonstrated its interference with normal joint cartilage formation.
Tetracycline and erythromycin are also effective in the management of LGV, but the treatment course for this disease should be extended to at least 3 weeks. Buboes should be drained by needle aspiration rather than incision and drainage, since the latter procedure is thought to increase the risk of development of chronic lymphocutaneous fistulae.
Since Chlamydia trachomatis infections are sexually transmitted, it is extremely important that the sex partners of treated patients also be treated to prevent Chlamydia reinfection of these patients. Both the male and female partners of patients with chlamydial disease are usually asymptomatic.
Chlamydia Cure? Chlamydia treatment in Infants
Topical treatment of chlamydial conjunctivitis in infants is inadequate, since the organism often persists in the nasopharynx and may later cause pneumonia. Systemic treatment with erythromycin syrup is the treatment of choice for infants and young children. Experience with alternative drugs in this age group is limited, although the successful treatment of a few cases of chlamydial conjunctivitis with oral amoxicillin has been described by Bell et al.
