Epidemiologic Treatment for Contacts to Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis Infection in Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic Patients in Seattle, WA; 1994 to 2018

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend that clinicians empirically treat the sex partners of persons with Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC) or Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) infection before confirming that they are infected. It is possible that this practice, known as epidemiologic treatment, results in overtreatment for uninfected persons and may contribute to development of antimicrobial resistance. We sought to quantify the number of patients who received epidemiologic treatment and the proportion of those who were overtreated. METHODS: We reviewed records from a municipal sexually transmitted disease clinic in Seattle, WA, from 1994 to 2018 to identify visits by asymptomatic patients seeking care because of sexual contact to a partner with GC and/or CT. We defined overtreatment as receipt of antibiotic(s) in the absence of a positive GC/CT test result and calculated the proportions of contacts epidemiologically treated and tested positive for GC/CT and overtreated in five 5-year periods stratified by sex and gender of sex partner. We used the Cochran-Armitage test to assess for temporal trends. RESULTS: The number of asymptomatic contacts epidemiologically treated for GC/CT increased from 949 to 3159 between the 1994-1998 and 2014-2018 periods. In 2014-2018, 55% of persons were overtreated, most (82.1%) of these were men who have sex with men (MSM). The proportion of MSM overtreated decreased from 74% to 65% (P < 0.01), but the total number of overtreated MSM increased from 172 to 1428. DISCUSSION: A high proportion of persons receiving epidemiologic treatment of GC/CT are uninfected. The current practice of routinely treating all sex partners of persons with GC/CT merits reconsideration in light of growing antimicrobial resistance.