The prevalence of some bacterial markers in female patients undergoing an initial infertility evaluation in north-east Romania.

SCOPE: Genital infections represent one of the most important causes of infertility, affecting: fallopian tubes, endometrial mucosa, sperm parameters. The aim of this study is to evaluate the involvement of four sexually transmitted infections (STD) in the achievement of infertility and to establish the prevalence of each infectious agent in our patients.

METHODS

We analyzed the presence of Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) antigen, Ureaplasma urealyticum (UU), Mycoplasma hominis (MH) and Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) in the endocervical secretions and Chlamydia trachomatis antibodies IgA, IgG, IgM in the serum of 125 infertile women as well as in 30 pregnant women in the 3rd trimester of pregnancy, as a control group. RESULTS. In infertile women, the prevalence rate of the four bacterial markers was: CT antigen 1/125 (0.80%), CT IgG antibodies 19/125 (15.20%), MH 6/125 (4.80%), UU 51/125 (40.80%) and NG 1/125 (0.8%). From the control group, none was positive for CT antigen, but 1/30 (3.33% of patients) was positive for CT IgA while the prevalence rate for MH and UU were 16.66% and 43.33% respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

We couldn't prove any association between genital MH/UU and infertility as the prevalence was higher in the control group than in the cases, but the correlation of the CT infection with the infertility was clearly shown. However, it is necessary to perform routine tests to screen for CT, NG, UU and MH among infertile patients. The positivity for CT IgG is a marker better correlated with fallopian tube obstruction than the CT antigen.