You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 5, Issue 10
  • An observational study to evaluate three pilot programmes of retesting chlamydia-positive individuals within 6 months in the South West of England

Article Text

Article menu

This article has a correction. Please see:

XML
Epidemiology
Research
An observational study to evaluate three pilot programmes of retesting chlamydia-positive individuals within 6 months in the South West of England
  1. Georgina Angel1,
  2. Paddy J Horner2,
  3. Norah O'Brien3,
  4. Matt Sharp4,
  5. Karl Pye5,
  6. Cecilia Priestley6,
  7. John Macleod7,
  8. Katharine J Looker1,
  9. Katherine M E Turner8
  1. 1Department of Screening and Immunisation, Public Health England, Bristol, UK
  2. 2School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
  3. 3South West Office of Sexual Health, Public Health England, Bristol, UK
  4. 4Cornwall Chlamydia Screening Office, Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, Truro, UK
  5. 5Young People Public Health Team, Public Health England, Bristol, UK
  6. 6The Park Centre for Sexual Health, Weymouth, UK
  7. 7Department of Social Medicine, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
  8. 8School of Social and Community Medicine/School of Veterinary Sciences, University of Bristol, Bath, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Katherine ME Turner; katy.turner{at}bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives To evaluate 3 pilot chlamydia retesting programmes in South West England which were initiated prior to the release of new National Chlamydia Screening Programme (NCSP) guidelines recommending retesting in 2014.

Methods Individuals testing positive between August 2012 and July 2013 in Bristol (n=346), Cornwall (n=252) and Dorset (n=180) programmes were eligible for inclusion in the retesting pilots. The primary outcomes were retest within 6 months (yes/no) and repeat diagnosis at retest (yes/no), adjusted for area, age and gender.

Results Overall 303/778 (39.0%) of participants were retested within 6 months and 31/299 (10.4%) were positive at retest. Females were more likely to retest than males and Dorset had higher retesting rates than the other areas.

Conclusions More than a third of those eligible were retested within the time frame of the study. Chlamydia retesting programmes appear feasible within the context of current programmes to identify individuals at continued risk of infection with relatively low resource and time input.

  • EPIDEMIOLOGY

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007455

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Supplementary Data

      This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

    Linked Articles

    • Correction
      Correction
      British Medical Journal Publishing Group
      BMJ Open 2015; 5 - Published Online First: 19 Nov 2015. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007455corr1