People who are infected with chlamydia can transmit these bacteria to other people during unprotected sex. The pathogens usually cause no or only mild symptoms at first, such as itching in the vagina, penis or anus. If the infection is noticed, it can be easily treated with antibiotics.
If this does not happen, the bacteria can cause serious problems, including infertility and cancer. A phenomenon is known from everyday clinical practice that can occur after successful antibiotic treatment: when people who have already been treated come to the doctor with a new chlamydia infection, they are often infected with exactly the same strains of bacteria as the previous infection. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the bacteria find a niche in the body where they are not yet vulnerable, that they form a permanent reservoir there and can become active again later.
" Professor Thomas Rudel, chlamydia expert and Head of the Chair of Microbiology at the Biocentre of Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany This phenomenon is known as persistence. It is problematic because the chlamydia that persist in the body become increasingly resistant to antibiotics over time. Intestinal organoids experimentally infected with chlamydia In which niche do the bacteria persist? Experiments on mouse models have shown that chlamydia can persist in the intestines of animals.
And in humans, too, the bacteria seem to make themselves at home in precisely this place. This is.