NEW YORK – A new study from Quest Diagnostics and the University of Alabama published late last month found that pregnant women in the US are undertested for chlamydia and gonorrhea.
The study, published in the Journal of Lower Genital Tract Disease, looked at de-identified laboratory test results performed by Quest for nearly 4.1 million pregnancies and found that more than one in three pregnant women who tested positive for chlamydia or gonorrhea did not receive a follow-up negative test before giving birth, despite the possibility of transmitting infections to newborns. The risk of transmission during birth is approximately 50 percent and raises the potential for newborns to develop eye and lung infections as well as other health issues, Quest said in a statement.
About 2 percent of patients who received a negative result for chlamydia or gonorrhea early in pregnancy later received a positive result, and of those, approximately half were still positive prior to delivery.
"Our analysis shows that improved adherence to existing recommendations, harmonization of guidelines across agencies, and even updated recommendations for STI testing will be critical to ensuring the mothers and babies in the United States receive medically appropriate testing and treatment," Damian Alagia, one of the study's authors and medical director of women's health at Quest, said in a statement.
The authors provided multiple recommendations for best practice, including that a test for cure should be performed four to eight weeks after the initial positive test and that, for pregnant patients who retest positive, additional testing and treatment should be provided until cure or clearance is documented. In addition, patients with positive results during the first trimester should be retested eight to 12 weeks after an initial positive test result.
The authors noted that while the study is large and included national representation, it is limited by the lack of clinical follow-up information for positive cases.