Is the prevalence of Chlamydia increasing and what threats does it pose?
Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted disease that can result in a lot of problems that can potentially cost a country a lot of money. Nurses are a great intermediary that if utilized efficiently can greatly reduce the effects Chlamydia has on society through awareness of the disease, by explaining strategies of prevention and encouraging people to get tested annually. Sadly, Chlamydia is a disease that is easily preventable but it infects 131 million people per year worldwide. In the US alone, Chlamydia infects 20 million people each year, and it cost the US $16 billion in direct medical costs. This does not include the indirect cost that Chlamydia has on the US. Chlamydia rates have increased faster for men, but the STD also affects women and does not discriminate on race or ethnic origin. In the US more than two-thirds of the cases reported were people between the ages of 15 and 24. The disease disproportionately affects minority groups when compared to their white counterparts because of access to contraceptives and proper healthcare. The article goes on to discuss how the disease is usually asymptomatic for women while men usually suffer from urethritis and epididymitis. The article brings up the point that women have higher prevelance but men’s rates are increasing because one man can infect multiple women easily. The highest rates of infection were for women in the southern United States and Alaska. Another reason why we should prioritize antibiotics for Chlamydia is because if not treated it can cause Trachoma, which can lead to blindness.
Does Chlamydia penetrate the intestinal tract and what can prevent it from appearing there?
This article got me interested since the article discusses how the CD4 on T-Helper cells is required for the elimination of Chlamydia in the Small Intestines but not in the Large intestines. The article talks about a test done on mice that showed that Chlamydia was cleared from the genital tract after 4 weeks, but spread to the gastrointestinal tract during that 4 weeks. When analyzing the gastrointestinal tract more closely, the experiment further exemplifies that after 28 days Chlamydia was cleared from the small intestines but it stayed in the Large Intestines for a various long period. The article never specifies how long Chlamydia stays in the Large Intestines. The test was used to exemplify that when a mouse has low levels of α/β T cells or CD4 T cells, Chlamydia stayed in the small gut. The article talks about how CD8 T cells did not affect how fast Chlamydia left the gut. This experiment showed how important it was for CD4 T cells to clear Chlamydia in the small intestines. The article goes into further depth about gamma interferon and IL-22 which aided or hurt the signaling pathway for CD4 T cells. The articles main purpose was to show that Chlamydia can be present in different parts of the body and based on the part of the body the immune response requires different types of cells in the immune system to clear itself. In conclusion, the scientists were never able to figure out what part of the immune system could be enhanced to clear the Large Intestines of Chlamydia.
What does this mean?
Some points to focus on when talking about how nurses can help with reducing the STI rates include: getting rid of the skepticism related to the healthcare field, language barriers, and societal barriers of the diagnosis of STI. Nurses have a lot of power since they are the first face that people see when they enter the examination room or when they enter the hospital. Nurses can’t do all of this alone, they need the help of their fellow doctors and politicians who represent them. It will take a joint effort to minimize the effects that Chlamydia will have on society as a global disease and as a local disease. It is also important to know where and if Chlamydia stays in the body after it has been “cured”. I found both of these articles to be interesting, but I also want to bring up the point that it wasn’t the easiest for me to understand, I can only imagine an average person. If the average person who hasn’t had the opportunity to take Microbiology with Dr. Cramer, they might not be as well informed how manageable it is to contain STDs. I think that a major reason the average person doesn’t know how simple it is to prevent spreading Chlamydia is because of all the medical jargon used when discussing STDs. Hopefully, through creating better connections between healthcare providers and their communities, we can easily contain the further spread of Chlamydia.
Common Sense about Microbio...Duh 