In 2004, Hopkins developed an online Chlamydia screening program which allows young adults in their teens and twenties to order home-testing kits. After performing the test, the patients mail the kit to a lab and then receive results by phone, email or text message.
In a recent study, Charlotte Gaydos, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at Hopkins, and colleagues conducted a study to compare the prevalence of women tested positive for Chlamydia using the online program to those who tested positive in family planning clinics in Baltimore.
Their results showed that 10.3% of women using the online kit tested positive, whereas only 3.3% to 5.5% were positive in family planning clinics.
The findings do not imply that clinic tests too many false-negatives or that the home-kit has a larger number of false-positives. Rather, the results suggest that the online test reaches a broader, more diverse population. As a result, the results of the online kit are more in line with the actual Chlamydia infection rate among young women.
The CDC recommends that young women between the ages of 15 and 25 be screened for Chlamydia if they are sexually active. However, “a lot of young women don’t have the money or insurance to go to a clinic or a doctor to have a test done,” Gaydos said. “Or they might have the money, but don’t want to ask their parents for a ride to the clinic.”
This is where the kit comes in: it is free, completely confidential, and can be ordered online at any time.
“The Internet is by far the most popular means of getting tested among this sexually active group, and at a time when they are most at risk of becoming infected,” Gaydos said in an interview with Futurity.org.
Currently, the kit is offered in Alaska, Denver, Maryland, West Virginia, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. and Gaydos hopes to make it available throughout the country. “I think it’ll be slow, but we get queries all the time asking how to get into the program. I’ve talked to officials from Wisconsin to California to Florida,” Gaydos said. “However, it’s important to remember that the kit is not the end all to be all.”
One problem with the kit is that it is not FDA approved. “For a lab to test home-collected samples there has to be a laboratory verification study done,” Gaydos said. The lab has to prove to the FDA that what they are doing is valid, which is a time-consuming and expensive process.
Nevertheless, Gaydos is hopeful. “Many research studies show that the program works, is acceptable to women, and also that they prefer it,” Gaydos explained. “So I see no reason why it can’t be approved.”
The creators of the kit are always looking for new ways to market to the youth. Recently they created a bar code that can be photographed using a cell phone. The bar code opens an app that directs them to the website. “This is important for reaching underprivileged youth,” Gaydos said on Futurity.org. “Especially those who can’t afford a home computer and whose access to the Internet is mainly through their smart phones.”
Chlamydia is a common disease that is likely to reoccur in those who have had it before. “The more times you have the infection the most likely you will develop an inflammatory disease,” Gaydos said. The kit is just one method of helping a susceptible population prevent contraction.
