Clinical Significance
See also: Chlamydia infectionC. trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen (i.e. the bacterium lives within human cells) and can cause numerous disease states in both men and women. Both sexes can display urethritis, proctitis (rectal disease and bleeding), trachoma, and infertility. The bacterium can cause prostatitis and epididymitis in men. In women, cervicitis, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), ectopic pregnancy, and acute or chronic pelvic pain are frequent complications.
C. trachomatis is also an important neonatal pathogen, where it can lead to infections of the eye (trachoma) and pulmonary complications. Chlamydia trachomatis is the single most important infectious agent associated with blindness; approximately 600 million worldwide suffer C. trachomatis eye infections and 20 million are blinded as a result of the infection.
Read more about this topic: Chlamydia Trachomatis
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