Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
However, it is possible for symptoms to develop months or even years after infection, especially if you develop complications such as Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (in women) or epididymitis (in men). In many people, chlamydia never causes any symptoms.
However, if chlamydia is left untreated, it can cause permanent damage. Your risk of getting other STIs, like gonorrhea or HIV, increases. In males, untreated chlamydia can lead to sterility (inability to make sperm).
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.
Yes, Chlamydia can be dormant in the body for several years without any flare-up to trigger a symptomatic infection. This means a person could live with Chlamydia for many years without knowing because the typical symptoms don't appear.
Leaving a chlamydia infection untreated for years increases the risk of developing serious complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and further infections. For women, PID can cause: scar tissue that blocks fallopian tubes. ectopic pregnancy.
On the other hand, if you don't get tested or don't see a healthcare provider for treatment, chlamydia can live in the body for weeks, months, or even years without being detected. This can lead to long-term complications, including infertility.
Chlamydia Dormancy Facts
Although some symptoms can appear within weeks of contact, there have been reports of chlamydia remaining dormant for over twenty years. If you have had recent sexual contact and wonder about chlamydia infections, don't hesitate to test.
Most people who have chlamydia don't know it. Often the disease has no symptoms. You can pass chlamydia to others without knowing it.
There is no clear timeline on how long it may take for this to occur - while one study suggests that after exposure to the bacteria, it can take a few weeks for PID to develop, the NHS estimates that 1 in 10 women with untreated chlamydia could go on to develop PID within a year.
If left untreated, chlamydia can cause pelvic inflammatory disease in women, which can lead to chronic pain and infertility. In men, untreated chlamydia can cause pain and swelling in one or both testicles.
However if the infection is left untreated in women it can spread into the uterus or fallopian tubes and cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Pelvic inflammatory disease can result in serious complications, including infertility, ectopic pregnancy and long-term abdominal pain.
Whilst Chlamydia often lays dormant in many people, the disease may flare up and cause symptoms due to a change in the immune system such as a cold or flu. Symptoms include: Unusual discharge from bottom, vagina or penis.
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.
A significant number of men do not typically show symptoms for STDs such as chlamydia although they are very capable of spreading the disease. Even though they are generally asymptomatic or dormant, they will still test positive for the STD. Most STDs that are in a dormant stage can be detected with a test.
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%.
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.
Apparently the disease can live inside your gut, and reinfect you out of the blue. Apparently doctors have known that chlamydia can reappear in cured patients for about 80 years, but they've been stumped as to how exactly it happens.
Heavy, abnormal discharge that may have a foul odor. Abnormal bleeding, particularly during or after intercourse, outside of regular menstrual periods. Painful, frequent, or difficult urination.
Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
Chlamydia often has no symptoms, but it can cause serious health problems, even without symptoms. If symptoms occur, they may not appear until several weeks after having sex with a partner who has chlamydia.
Some refer to chlamydia as a “silent” infection. This is because most people with the infection have no symptoms or abnormal physical exam findings.
Your nurse or doctor will tell you exactly what type of antibiotics you need, and when to get tested again to make sure the antibiotics worked. The only way that chlamydia would stay in your body after you started treatment was if you didn't take all of the prescribed medicine.