Investigation of chlamydia antibodies in infertile women

Among the factors that cause infertility in women, tube defects caused by pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) take the first place. Although PID may be caused by a variety of microorganisms, sexually transmitted Chlamydia trachomatis infections are the most common causes of both PID and tubal infertility in the literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of C. trachomatis antibodies among infertile female patients and to determine the relationship of C. trachomatis infection with infertility. In this study, 184 patients who applied to Gaziantep University Şahinbey Hospital for infertility and underwent hysterosalpingography (HSG) were evaluated for the presence of C. trachomatis infection. As a control group, 88 fertile women applied to the same hospital for routine follow-up were elected. Women within the patient group were further divided into two subgroups as being primary infertile (95/184) and secondary infertile (89/184). No pathologic finding was detected in HSG of 70.1% (129/184) in the patient group. Out of 55 patients with abnormal HSG findings, 46 (83.6%) were detected to have tubal obstruction and 9 (16.4%) uterine anomalies. For the investigation of C. trachomatis IgG antibodies, ELISA method (Chlamydia trachomatis IgG Vircell, Spain) was used. As the results were analyzed, 11.9% (22/184) of women who suffered from infertility and 3.4% (3/88) of fertile women within the control group were positive for C. trachomatis antibodies. When patients and controls were compared, C. trachomatis infection was found significantly more frequent in infertile women than fertiles (p=0.022). Compared to patients with secondary infertility (5.6%), patients with primary infertility (17.9%) were more frequently infected with C. trachomatis, and this difference was statistically significant (p=0.010). Among women with normal HSG results 10.8% (14/129) and among those with abnormal HSG results 14.5% (8/55) had C. trachomatis antibodies. Though C. trachomatis antibodies were more frequently detected in infertile women with tube obstruction or uterine anomalies than in patients with normal findings at HSG, there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups (p=0.479). As result, the observation that C. trachomatis infections had been detected significantly more frequent in infertile women than in fertile women, suggested the contribution of this agent to infertility.