Incidence of Trichomonas vaginalis in Marital Partners

Vaginitis, due to T. vaginalis, continues to cause considerable and often prolonged distress to many women and at the time of writing no really efficacious treatment has been reported.In recent years the relative lack of success in treating the female alone and the high incidence of relapse even after a considerable period of freedom from symptoms has resulted in attention being focused on T. vaginalis infestation in the male and the possibility of re- infection during sexual contact.There have been varying reports as to the incidence of T. vaginalis infestation in the male, mostly from venereal disease clinics and therefore representing selected groups comprising mainly men who either had symptoms or had been promiscuous.Lanceley (1953) found that 5-8 per cent. of 310 men with symptoms of non-gonococcal urethritis harboured T. vaginalis and Durel, Roiron-Ratner, Siboulet, and Sorel (1954) found an incidence of 12-1 per cent. in 228 similar patients.From Chile, Coutts, Vargas-Salazar, Silva-Inzunza, Olmedo, Turteltaub, and Saavedra (1955) reported an incidence of 68 per cent. in 2,482 males with non-gonococcal urethritis, but this has yet to be confirmed.All these workers, as well as Feo, Varano, and Fetter ( 1956), who found T. vaginalis in 18 per cent. of 183 men with urethral discharge, used direct methods of examination of stained and unstained specimens to demonstrate the organism.Whittington (1957), using cultural tech- niques, found T. vaginalis in 15 3 per cent. of 326 men with non-gonococcal urethritis and in eight (33 3 per cent.) of 24 symtomless male consorts of women known to have trichomonal vaginitis.This author stresses the superiority of the cultural method of diagnosis over direct examination, as do Kean and Day (1954) and Nicol (1958).