Can a chlamydia test be inaccurate?

Q: Alison: My friend has been married nine years and is pregnant with her second child. She went in for her follow-up test and the doctor told her she had chlamydia. The only way she could have gotten it is if her husband had sex with someone else, but they have both been monogamous.

And here's the second part of my question: her other baby is a year old. She had the test then and she had the test the year before also, when she miscarried. Both previous tests were performed in the last three years.

A: Dr. Dean: In a sense, she's lucky she got pregnant. Chlamydia is one of the most common causes of infertility. It is a bacteria that can cause PID, or pelvic inflammatory disease, which can be chronic.

This is a fairly suspicious situation. There is the classic example of a guy going to the doctor and says call my wife in to get antibiotics and tell her that she's got a flu or something to cover it.

Chlamydia can form a pocket in a woman's tubes. It can stay inactive for a time and then come out positive. I just think it would cause symptoms in that regard, like stomaches and difficulties similar to that.

I would raise a higher index of suspicion there than in a case of herpes or even genital warts. I'll leave the rest up to you and your friend, but not 100 percent.

Dean Edell, M.D.

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