2024-09-04 10:00:07
Chlamydia is considered to be easily treatable. However, a new study by German researchers shows that the bacteria find a previously unrecognized niche in the body.
Chlamydia infection is known to be a sexually transmitted disease. However, many people do not know that these bacteria can also hide in a rather unexpected place in the body: the gastrointestinal tract. This finding could explain why many sufferers are repeatedly infected despite antibiotic treatment, according to a research group from Würzburg and Berlin.
Normally, a chlamydia infection is treated with antibiotics and is then considered cured. However, it happens again and again that patients carry the same strains of bacteria and become ill again. This leads to the assumption that the bacteria could find a kind of “hiding place” in the body where they cannot be reached by medication.
“The suspicion is that the bacteria find a niche in the body where they are not yet vulnerable, that they form a permanent reservoir there and can become active again later,” said Professor Thomas Rudel, head of the Department of Microbiology at the Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg, according to a press release. This niche could actually be the gastrointestinal tract.
In laboratory experiments, the researchers used miniature organs grown from cells of the human gastrointestinal tract – so-called organoids. These artificial intestines were successfully infected with the pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis. The scientists found that the inner cell layer of the miniature intestine was very resistant to the bacteria. They could only penetrate the intestinal wall if this layer was damaged. From the blood, however, it was easy for the chlamydia to infect the intestine.
Applied to the human organism, this would mean that a chlamydia infection with subsequent persistence can only occur with difficulty via the intestines, but very easily via the blood. Whether this actually happens in the human body still needs to be confirmed in clinical studies, say the researchers.
“Persistent infections are also difficult to treat with antibiotic therapy,” the research team emphasized. Therefore, there is an increased risk of repeated infections and the development of antibiotic resistance.
Persistence is a state in which bacteria are still viable but no longer divide. Many bacteria enter such a dormant phase under poor environmental conditions; when conditions are more favorable for them – for example, when the immune system is weakened – they return to their normal development cycle and can cause diseases again.