There are several reasons why your partner's Chlamydia test may come back negative: He or she may never have had the infection. Not everyone who comes in contact with Chlamydia will develop the infection. The test result may be a false negative.
It can be confusing if one partner tests positive for chlamydia or another STI and the other does not. However, this can happen for many reasons, including false positives and false negatives. Even the most contagious STIs do not transmit from one partner to another every time they have sex.
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. If you test before that 14 days is over, you may test negative, but you could still pass the bacteria on following your test.
Your sexual partner would need to have an STI for them to be able to pass one to you. What could happen is they have a negative test but end up having an STI (we call this a false negative test). It's also possible they could have an STI that was not tested for.
You can get chlamydia by having vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has chlamydia. Also, you can still get chlamydia even if your sex partner does not ejaculate (cum). A pregnant person with chlamydia can give the infection to their baby during childbirth.
How did I get chlamydia if I didn't cheat? You can get chlamydia if your partner had vaginal, oral or anal sex with someone who was infected and then had sex with you.
Using a test with 97.2% sensitivity and 98.5% specificity,3 the positive and negative predictive values are 49.7% and 99.9%, respectively. That means the chance that a positive result is a false positive is greater than 50%.
As most people do not have symptoms, it is possible the person (who tested positive) could have had chlamydia/gonorrhea from a previous relationship, and has not passed it to their partner yet. It is never 100% that you will pass an STI when you have sex.
The short answer
Yes, it is possible to contract a STI from someone who tested negative (for the STIs that they were tested for)… if (and only if!) they were positive for an STI that they weren't tested for. Or if they were positive for an STI in a location that didn't get tested, such as in the mouth and throat.
In other words, a few people may be falsely diagnosed with chlamydia when they in fact have another infection or nothing at all. Occasional false results may be due to mistakes in taking the specimen and running the test, or because of contamination in the laboratory environment.
For example, a person's urine test for chlamydia may be positive but their genital culture may come back negative. False-negative results are those in which you have a condition but the test says you don't. False-positive results are those in which you don't have a condition but the test says you do.
Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
For chlamydia testing in females, false-positive rates (1 – specificity) ranged from 0% to 2% across anatomical sites in 6 studies,23,29,30,34,35,37 including 0% to 0.7% for endocervical, 0% to 1.2% for vaginal, 0.2% to 1.7% for urethral, and 0% to 2% for urine testing.
Yes, chlamydia can lie dormant in the body, causing a low-grade infection without symptoms.
Chlamydia. A doctor can test for chlamydia by swabbing the vagina, cervix, rectum, or throat, or by taking a urine sample. If symptoms appear, they usually present within 7–21 days of exposure. A test can normally detect chlamydia within 1–2 weeks of exposure.
If 2 people who don't have any STDs have sex, it's not possible for either of them to get one. A couple can't create an STD from nothing — they have to get spread from one person to another.
For chlamydia testing in men, the sensitivity and specificity were 88% and 99%. respectively, for urine samples compared to urethral samples. For gonorrhea testing in women, the sensitivity and specificity were 79% and 99%, respectively, for urine samples compared to cervical samples.
False-positive Chlamydiazyme results during urine sediment analysis due to bacterial urinary tract infections.
Chlamydia can lie dormant for months or years and it is often detected through screening and routine sexual health testing. If symptoms do develop, it usually takes 1-3 weeks after exposure to notice signs.
Following single-dose treatment for chlamydia, both pregnant and nonpregnant women should test negative with NAAT by 30 days post-treatment.
Understanding Trichomoniasis
Chlamydia and trichomoniasis are similar infections and they are commonly confused, but it's important to know the difference, as the two infections are not treated with the same antibiotic. Trichomoniasis (trich) is caused by a parasite called Trichomonas Vaginalis.
Late-stage chlamydia refers to an infection that has spread to other parts of the body. For example, it may have spread to the cervix (cervicitis), testicular tubes (epididymitis), eyes (conjunctivitis), or throat (pharyngitis), causing inflammation and pain.
Previous data suggest that females are more likely to contract Chlamydia trachomatis from infected males than males are likely to contract it from females.
Most people who have chlamydia don't notice any symptoms.
If you do get symptoms, these usually appear between 1 and 3 weeks after having unprotected sex with an infected person. For some people they don't develop until many months later. Sometimes the symptoms can disappear after a few days.
Some studies have suggested that urine is a better specimen than urethral swabs for chlamydial detection by PCR. Young and colleagues studied 244 men who attended a GUM clinic and found that urine PCR (96%) was more sensitive than urethral swab PCR (89%).