spoke with Dr. Pierre-Paul Tellier, an Associate Professor at the Department of Family Medicine, and expert in adolescent medicine . He is also a family physician at Montreal’s Clinic Medic Elle and CLSC Cote-des-Neiges where he developed the new Clinique Mauve that offers care to racialized patients, immigrants, and sexual and gender diverse individuals.
Tell me about the most common STIs, chlamydia and gonorrhea and HPV.
Dr. Tellier.: Chlamydia and gonorrhea are very similar bacterial infections that are transmitted usually through penetrative sex, depositing the bacteria within a warm environment where the bacteria flourish. HPV is a range of viruses that cause a variety of diseases. You might not realize, for example, that the wart on your finger is caused by HPV. But it’s a different kind of HPV that we’ll find in the genitals where you can develop genital warts. It’s transmitted through contact, although you don’t necessarily need to have penetration. It’s extremely common. Studies that were done at ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ with the team that I’m part of have found that somewhere between 60 to 80 per cent of individuals will pick up HPV during their lifetime.
What are the symptoms?
Dr. T.: Unfortunately [for these three], which is what makes life difficult for physicians and individuals who are sexually active, is that the major symptom is no symptom. In other words, people will be carriers and will not be aware that they’re infected and will pass it on to somebody else.
How do people develop chlamydia, gonorrhea and HPV? What are the health risks?
Dr. T.: Sexual activity is the major risk factor. If people don’t have symptoms early, that infection keeps going. With chlamydia and gonorrhea, young women can have some pain and could develop something called pelvic inflammatory disease that will give you marked pain in the area of the uterus. Upon examination by a physician, or even during intercourse, when the cervix is hit, the pain is made worse. For a young woman who has never had pain during intercourse, who suddenly has vivid pain, that’s something that needs to be checked. In young men, they’ll have the pain in the scrotum.
Are there lifestyle choices that can help prevent STIs?
Dr. T.: We have to remember that a large group of people who are infected are young people. And young people are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to find a partner. That’s part of what you do when you’re in your late teens and early 20s, or even a younger teen. Within the finding a partner is the intimacy that comes with it. So if you get into a relationship and you think that you want to have sex, then talk to your partner about STIs.
What about treatments?
Dr. T.: Chlamydia and gonorrhea are both bacterial. And what that means is essentially that both of them are treatable using an antibiotic. So that’s the major point, if we identify them, then we can essentially treat them and prevent transmission. With gonorrhea, the more complicated thing is that although we are developing some resistant strains with chlamydia and with gonorrhea, we’re getting to a point where we now have difficulty finding an effective antibiotic. We need to get rid of the infection. As a result, we’re using a combination of antibiotics that have to be taken over several days instead of just one pill.
What’s one piece of advice for someone with chlamydia and gonorrhea? And for HPV?
Dr. T.: For chlamydia and gonorrhea, do your treatment and follow the instructions that you’ve received, and then go back and be tested to make sure you’ve gotten rid of it. And avoid having sexual contact during the time you’re being treated. Make sure that your partner has been tested and is not infected, because if you continue having sex during that period with somebody who’s infected, you can take all the antibiotics, but the infection will come back.