If you do have symptoms then you will still need to be tested to effectively diagnose that the symptoms are caused by chlamydia.
Anyone with chlamydia is carrying the Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria in their body. This bacteria is easily passed on through unprotected sex whether the person has physical symptoms or not. Modern medical testing is incredibly accurate and this includes STD tests.
A false negative is where a person has a condition, despite the medical test saying they are all clear. As well as these small amounts of false negatives there are a number of scenarios that can cause a person to have chlamydia and still test negative. Every STD test has an advised date from which a test becomes accurate. This is because the bacteria needs enough time to multiply within your body in order for it to reach a detectable level when taking a chlamydia test. For chlamydia this is often 14 days.
One such example is an HIV test. How often false results occur doesn't only depend on the sensitivity and specificity of a test.
It also depends on how common a disease is, which is known as the disease prevalence. Imagine, for example, that there is a rare disease that only affects only one in a million people.
If the test is very good at detecting the disease, it will always find that one-in-a-million case. However, because there are so few people with the disease, the chances are great that there will be more false positives than true positives. On the other hand, if a disease is common and a large part of the population has it, then the situation would be reversed. Even if the test has lower sensitivity, there would still be more true positives than false positives simply because there are more people who have the disease.
The accuracy of a test is also influenced by how common or uncommon a disease is. If a disease is rare, there will usually be more false positives than true positives. If a disease is common, there will be more true positives than false positives. If you get two different results from two different tests, what should you do? The answer depends largely on the type of disease involved.
Imagine that the disease is easy enough to treat, and the treatment doesn't have any serious side effects. Then you may decide to go with the flow and take the treatment. Two such examples are chlamydia and gonorrhea , which are sometimes treated presumptively.
This means treatment is given if there's a chance the person may be infected. For example, sexual partners of a person who tests positive may be treated without being tested themselves.
However, if a treatment is costly or poses certain harms, then additional tests may be ordered to confirm the results. Such is the case with HIV tests , which require a confirmatory test to accurately diagnose the disease. When a confirmatory test is used, HIV tests are rarely ever wrong. In addition, most STDs have a window period during which the body hasn't produced enough antibodies to return an accurate test result.
If the tests are performed too soon after infection, it may return a false-negative result. In such cases, a person may be asked to come back for retesting if the exposure was recent and the risk of infection is high. STDs tests are very accurate, but they are not perfect. The accuracy of a test is based on its sensitivity true positive rate and specificity true negative rate. Tests that have lower sensitivity or specificity have a greater risk of a false results.
False-negative results are those in which you have a disease even if the test says you don't. False-positive results are those in which you don't have a disease even if a test says you do. Other factors can influence a test's accuracy, including how common or uncommon a disease is. Certain STD tests also have window periods in which a test may return a false-negative result if it is performed too soon after STD exposure. If you end up with an inconsistent STD test result, stop, take a breath, and ask your doctor for advice on how to best proceed.
If the treatment is simple, you may decide to take it even if you're not sure you are infected. Or, you may decide that it's better to get retested or use a different kind of test. There are sometimes more than one. Other issues can influence your decision. This includes knowing how to talk to a sex partner —not only about this incident but how to reduce your risk of STDs in the future even if you end up being negative. False-positive STD test results are rare. In the same way that false-positives STD results are rare, false-negative results are also rare.
She was pregnant and did not have the disease three months earlier. The doctor said she could only have contracted it if her husband was cheating on her. First, it is possible to have a false positive on these test results, and the poor husband may be telling the truth about his fidelity.
Another possibility is that the earlier test did not pick up the chlamydia, when, in fact, it was already present. Most of my patients who test positive for chlamydia at the initial prenatal visit are asymptomatic and may have had this infection for some time.
The important thing is to get the patient and her husband treated. Dear Virginia Beach: We received a great deal of mail from readers saying they, too, had been diagnosed with chlamydia when pregnant, only to discover that the test was inaccurate. Here's more:. From the Midwest: Please tell "Somewhere North of Honolulu" that a diagnosis of chlamydia does not always mean sex is involved.
Years ago, I was diagnosed with this disease, and was mystified and upset. My gynecologist reassured me that he had once treated an elderly virgin nun for chlamydia. Baton Rouge, La.
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