Prevalence of Chlamydia trachomatis cervical infection in a college gynecology clinic: relationship to other infections and clinical features

Abstract

A total of 479 sexually active college women presenting for routine gynecologic care were screened for gonorrheal and chlamydial infection of the cervix. Most of these women were asymptomatic; those with symptoms had minor complaints related to the lower genital tract. A direct fluorescent antibody test (DFA) showed the prevalence of chlamydial infection to be 8.1%, while culture for Neisseria gonorrhoeae indicated that the prevalence of gonorrhea was 1.5%. DFA-positive women had some minor alterations in the appearance of their cervix, but only 10% had overt mucopurulent cervicitis. The presence of purulent cervical discharge was four times more common in DFA-positive women, but only one-fourth of positive women had this finding. The use of an endocervical gram stain showing ten or more white cells per oil immersion field (x970) did not appear to be clinically useful in diagnosing suspected chlamydial infection because there was no significant difference in the number of white cells seen in specimens from DFA-positive (16 polymorphonuclear leukocytes) and DFA-negative women (ten polymorphonuclear leukocytes). Thus, use of the gram stain as an initial screening mechanism would not markedly reduce the number of women to be tested for Chlamydia trachomatis; half of all women met the gram-stain criterion, and nearly a quarter of the DFA-positive women would be overlooked.