The purpose of this article is to review and comment the advantages and disadvantages of Chlamydia trachomatis tests in clinical laboratories routine, emphasizing the techniques of amplification. Chlamydia trachomatis is considered the most frequent sexually transmitted bacterium in developed countries and it has an important impact on reproductive female tract. It causes diseases on urogenital tract, venereal limphogranuloma, trachoma, conjunctivitis and newborn pnemonia. One of the main risks of infection is the sexual practice among adolescents. Repetitive episodes of infection raise the risk of developing sequel as well as the chance of getting the infection with the human immunodeficiency virus. Its hard to diagnose the infection caused by Chlamydia trachomatis because most of times there are no symptoms. Nucleic acid amplification techniques allow us to use urine to detect chlamydia. It simplifies the sampling and offers greater accuracy than bacteria culture. It is even better than tests such as direct fluorescent antibodies and immunoassay. Cellular culture as reference techniques results in 100% of specificity and 70 to 85% of sensitivity. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is considered definitive when positive culture or, at least, two non culture distint tests. Amplification tests are more expensive than other tests, but cheaper than culture.
Chlamydia trachomatis; Polymerase chain reaction; Gold standard
