Teens and Chlamydia

Chlamydia is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in America and most often appears in teens and young adults. It’s a bacterial infection spread by vaginal, oral or anal sex. Most people don’t have any symptoms to alert them that they’ve been infected with chlamydia, so they unknowingly pass it from partner to partner.

Chlamydia is easily treated with antibiotics. If it’s not treated, chlamydia can cause serious damage to a woman’s reproductive system. Complications for women can include pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), a serious infection that can lead to infertility or potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. Widespread infections of the genital tract are rare in men, but can still contribute to infertility.

Untreated chlamydia also raises your risk for getting or giving HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) or herpes.

Risk Factors

Risk factors for chlamydia include:

• Having sex without using condoms.
• Having sex with a high-risk partner, such as someone who’s had many partners, a man who has sex with other men, injection drug users and commercial sex workers.
• Having multiple sexual partners.
• Having sex before 18 years of age.

Testing and Treatment

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), all sexually active women under age 25 should be screened for chlamydia annually or whenever they have a new sexual partner. Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, regardless of condom use, should also get tested, as should pregnant women under 25. High-risk people who may have sex again with untreated partners should be retested. 

Testing for females can involve a vaginal swab or urine test and, for males, a urethral swab or urine test. Unfortunately, a test can’t tell how long you’ve had chlamydia. The longer you have the infection, the more likely it is to cause serious complications. 

Chlamydia can be treated with one course of antibiotics. Your partner must also be treated.

Communicate

Some diseases, including chlamydia, are reportable to the public health department. This is important because chlamydia can affect an entire community. The only way to reduce risk of an outbreak is to educate everyone and encourage testing and treatment.

If teens and young adults become sexually active, it’s important that they talk to their sexual partners before having sex and to increase their protection by always using condoms.

Reviewed by: Elizabeth W. Lee, M.D.

Last reviewed: June 2019