GynoFiles

Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common curable sexually transmitted infection worldwide! And it can cause a fairly raging discharge and infection, or just be sitting quietly around for your gyno to stumble on during your pap smear. And it can be similar in men: from lots of symptoms to not many symptoms of infection at all. There are no FDA approved DNA tests that help us make that diagnosis, but often the organism can be found scooting across the slide during direct microscopic examination of vaginal discharge. When gynos examine the discharge they perform a test called a wet mount which suspends the discharge in a droplet of saline fluid so that the organisms can be seen better. Trichomonas vaginalis , also called Trich, is an STD, caught through sexual contact, but it's not a virus or a bacteria but a parasite that exclusively infects the urogenital tract. A new report from Medscape claims that Trich is getting exceedingly common, in fact new statistics indicate T vaginalis...

When asked what is the most common STD a patient is likely to have, we usually turn to statistics, and then try to skirt around the HPV issue. HPV is prevalent in millions, but mostly we cannot test for it, and few physicians usually site HPV when they consider STDs. If the vaccines have any promise at all, it would be to make HPV again a very rare disease. But we have often thought that chlamydia was then next most common STD followed by gonorrhea. But a new study shows that in at least one group of patients actually Trichomonas vaginalis , commonly called "trich" is more common than Chlamydia. But what is most important is to get checked every time you have a new partner. You and your gyno can get together and decide which tests are best and how frequently to have them.

Trichomonas Do you occasionally itch down there? Not every itch has to be a disease of course! But, there may be a common parasite breaststroking around in your vagina. This parasite is called Trichomonas vaginalis, or just the nickname “ trich ” to the initiated into the logo of those of us in the medical ‘know.’ It has four short front arms (flagella, if you must know) and a 5th appendage that is more tail than leg. The tail propels it through the marsh of the vaginal moisture and the arms sort of flail around in fairly jerky movements that wouldn’t be considered good technique in any pool. But then they are fairly easy to recognize when your gynecologist peers into a microscope onto a saline flooded drop of this moisture. Do we recommend scratching and bearing it? Resoundingly no, and for the rest of you who carry trich and are asymptomatic, you need treatment too. Untreated, yes, it probably will go away; but spontaneous clearance can take 5 years! While ofte...