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From: carter@gatech.UUCP (Carter Bullard)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Reiter's Syndrome (and chlamydia)
Message-ID: <12437@gatech.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 12:50:56 EST
Article-I.D.: gatech.12437
Posted: Sat Mar  9 12:50:56 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Mar-85 04:39:31 EST
References: <1640@pur-phy.UUCP> <497@ptsfa.UUCP> <1243@amdahl.UUCP>
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Organization: School of ICS, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
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> I thought chlamydia was a bacteria.  Yet here we have Merck
> saying that Reiters is associated with 'nonbacterial
> urethritis'; and proposing that tetracycline may control it...
> Am I reading this wrong or what?  Is chlamydia a bacteria or a virus?
> Can tetracycline do anything against viruses?
> 
> And what is this chlamydia stuff anyway.  I'd never heard of it
> before, and now its in magazine articles and on the net.  Is this
> the newest fad bug?
 
Well,
Chlamydia is bacteria-like and tetracycline is the drug of choice.
Chlamydia is normally associated as the bugger responsible for non-specific
urethritis, or better known as non-gonococcal urethritis.

Tetracycline, acts as a bacteriostatic, that is it stops bacteria from 
dividing, thus allowing your own immune system to catch up and take care 
of the problem.  It works quite well against chlamydia.  It does not have
any action against viruses( why isn't the plural for virus, viri?).
The second drug of choice is erythromycin which works a little like 
penicillin in that it causes the dividing bacteria to produce defective 
cell walls.

The Merck Manual (oh, by the way Merck is a drug company, not an author),
indicates that tetracycline is intended for the urethritis, not the
Reiters syndrome.

Reiters results from an autoimmune reaction that can be triggered 
by a chlamydia invasion, presumably because the antibodies produced against 
the chlamydia also have a slight tendency to attach to certain types of 
collagen found in certain types of cartilage that are located in certain
places in and around your body.  Rheumatic fever is a very similar problem,
where antibodies to streptococcus like to attach to the elastic fibers 
in the valves of your heart, thus the phrase "my rheumatic heart" and the 
reason that you should not let a persistant sore throat go unnoticed.  
Reiters is not specifically the result of a chlamydia infection.

Chlamydia has been around for about 3 billion +_ 1 billion years.  It however
is becoming noticed because of its increased contribution to the venereal
disease problem that we Americans just love to maintain.  It seems to have
developed in the last 2 years a tendency to produce a more pronounced set
of symptoms making it a little more obvious to the males that become
infected, and as a result more cases are being reported.
-- 
Carter Bullard
ICS, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet:Carter @ Gatech	ARPA:Carter.Gatech @ CSNet-relay.arpa
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