Assessment of Treatment and Screening Procedures for Chlamydia trachomatis Infections in a College Setting.

• Main Author: Hujoel, Margaux L.
• Published: Scholarship @ Claremont 2016
• Subjects: biology; biomathematics; epidemiology; Biology; Physical Sciences and Mathematics
• Online Access: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmc_theses/86

Chlamydia trachomatis infections are a common sexually transmitted infection in the United States in which the majority of cases are asymptomatic. Due to this asymptomatic nature, as well as the serious health issues that arise from untreated infections in women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a screening policy that annually targets women between the ages of 15 and 25 or older women with risk factors. There is little evidence supporting the efficacy of only screening women and doing so once per year. Through a stochastic epidemiological model, we investigate a variety of screening policies within a college setting and evaluate their impact on infection prevalence. We have developed a MATLAB program using an individual-based modeling approach to evaluate treatment and screening procedures. Using R, we present a statistical analysis of the outcome: under our model conditions, any procedure involving screening will eventually result in eradication of C. trachomatis infections in the population. Screening both men and women, however, seems to eliminate the infection in a population far more rapidly.