Burning on Urination May be STD Infection

One in three single, sexually-active Americans who have more than one partner carry a sexually transmitted disease that may not respond to treatment. These people may have no symptoms at all, or they may have pain during sexual relations, burning on urination, discomfort when the bladder is full, frequency, urgency and night-time urination, vaginal discomfort, difficulty starting the urinary stream, or discomfort in the pelvis. These people go from doctor to doctor, get lots of tests which fail to yield a diagnosis, and continue in their misery and spreading of disease.

This month, researchers in Greece showed that many of these people suffer from infections with intracellular bacteria: mycoplasma, chlamydia or ureaplasma (Urology, July 2009). Most cultures done in medical laboratories fail to pick up these infections. 153 patients had some of the above symptoms and had either failed a course of antibiotics or had negative routine cultures. The patients had cultures taken from their urine, urinary tube, vagina, and cervix. Fifty-three percent of these "incurable" patients were infected with ureaplasma urealyticum. Eighty-two percent of patients positive for ureaplasma urealyticum had other pathogens. A single dose of one gram of azithromycin was given to all culture-positive patients and their sexual partners. Those with a positive culture one month after therapy (4.9 percent) were successfully treated with seven days of doxycycline 100mg twice daily. All of the patients improved, but many continued to suffer pain in the pelvis.