The start of a new semester signals the returning flood of students, parties, a busier Court Street and increasingly, chlamydia.
“That is actually our number one infectious disease in Athens, Ohio,” Dr. James Gaskell, the health commissioner at the Athens City-County Health Department, said. “And I would guess that the college community has something to do with that because there is probably a lot of sexual activity among college students.”
According to the Ohio Department of Health, Athens County was among eight counties with the highest rates of chlamydia in the state with between 517 and 849 cases per 100,000 people as of May 2016.
A report by The State of Education, an education statistics and analysis website, found from July 2015 to June 2016, health-related searches containing the phrase “chlamydia symptoms” saw two major peaks in late September and mid-January. The report attributes the peak in late September, which begins to rise in late August, to the beginning of Fall Semester on college campuses and the spike in January to students returning from winter break. Smaller peaks occur around the time of other breaks, such as Thanksgiving and Spring Break.
Gaskell said that generally holds true for Athens, as well.
According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control, 20- to 24-year-old men had the highest rate of chlamydia among men in 2014, increasing 4.4 percent from the previous year. However, 20- to 24-year-old women had the highest rate of chlamydia compared with any other age and sex group, according to the report.
Dr. Jane Balbo, an assistant professor of family medicine and a family practice physician at Campus Care, said the apparent uptick in the rates of sexually transmitted infections might be a result of increased testing. She said more students may be willing to get tested because the testing is free and does not appear on parents’ insurance.
"There is just so much more awareness about the importance of getting tested by both health care providers and patients," Balbo said in an email.
Campus Care began offering free gonorrhea and chlamydia testing in 2012, Tonya Burdette, executive director of Ohio University Campus Care, said.
Gaskell said chlamydia is often asymptomatic and “males are often very asymptomatic,” which means many students don’t know they have it and end up passing it to someone else. According to the Centers for Disease Control, people who do have symptoms may not see them occur until several weeks after sex with an infected partner.
People who have symptoms may encounter abnormal discharge from the vagina or penis or a burning sensation when urinating, according to the CDC. Men with symptoms may experience pain and swelling in one or both testicles, but the CDC states that symptom is less common.
When the infection occurs in the rectum, possible symptoms include rectal pain, discharge and bleeding.
Balbo said people who have minor symptoms may confuse them as normal, “such as a slight increase in their already-present vaginal discharge.”
Chlamydia can cause health problems and damage the reproductive system when untreated, according to the CDC, but men don't often experience those long-term effects. Chlamydia that spreads to the uterus and fallopian tubes can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, resulting in abdominal and pelvic pain, infertility and ectopic pregnancy — a pregnancy that occurs outside the uterus and can be fatal to the mother.
Gaskell said students who choose to be sexually active should use condoms as a preventive measure.
"A barrier is a way of preventing passage of chlamydia from person to person, and other sexually transmitted diseases too," Gaskell said.
