Sex, Lives, and Chlamydia Rates

Perhaps the oldest recorded instance of infertility is recounted in Genesis 16:2, "Now Sarah, Abraham's wife, bore him no children...." Sarah eventually gave birth at the biblical age of 90 years, and it was unlikely that her earlier inability to become pregnant was the result of a sexually transmitted disease (STD). However, for an estimated 5% to 40% of women today who have experienced pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), infertility will be the likely sequelae to a sexually transmitted infection.1 "Pelvic inflammatory disease" poorly describes a number of infectious conditions, namely, cervicitis, endometritis, salpingitis, salpingo-oophoritis, peritonitis, or perihepatitis. Although PID results from infection with a variety of organisms, it isChlamydia trachomatisthat has raised recent concern, because of its apparent epidemic rise in the last decade, accounting for 40% of hospitalized cases of PID in the United States,2because of the increase in PID itself (an incidence of