PREVALENCE AND SEROVAR DISTRIBUTION OF ASYMPTOMATIC CERVICAL CHLAMYDIA-TRACHOMATIS INFECTIONS AS DETERMINED BY HIGHLY SENSITIVE PCR

The prevalence rates and serovar distributions of Chlamydia trachomati s cervical infections were investigated in two different groups of wom en, Group I consisted of 393 asymptomatic young women (aged 17 to 30 y ears) who were invited to participate in a C. trachomatis screening pr ogram, Group II consisted of 734 randomly selected patients (aged 17 t o 68 years) attending an inner-city gynecological outpatient clinic, C . trachomatis was detected in cervical scrapes by PCR specific for end ogenous plasmid. These plasmid PCR-positive samples were subsequently subjected to genotyping by C. trachomatis-specific omp1 PCR-based rest riction fragment length polymorphism analysis (J. Lan, J. M. M. Walboo mers, R. Roosendaal, G. J. van Doornum, D. M. MacLaren, C. J. L. M. Me ijer, and A. J. C. van den Brule, J. Clin. Microbiol. 31:1060-1065, 19 93). The overall prevalence rates of C. trachomatis found in patients younger than 30 years were 9.2 and 11.8% in groups I and II, respectiv ely. A clear age dependency was seen in group II, with the highest pre valence rate (20%) found in patients younger than 20 years, while the rate declined significantly after 30 years of age (5.9%). In women you nger than 30 years, the genotyping results showed that serovars E. I. and D (in decreasing order) were frequent in group I, while serovars F . E. and G (in decreasing order) were predominantly found in group II, The study shows that C. trachomatis infections are highly prevalent i n asymptomatic young women. The different serovar distributions found most likely reflect the different compositions of the study groups, bu t additional analysis of the case histories of individual patients sug gests that certain serovars might be associated with symptomatic (i.e. , serovar G) or asymptomatic (i.e., serovars D and I) infections.