LETTER

Diagnosis of lymphogranuloma venereum from biopsy samples

I M C Martin¹, S A Alexander², C A Ison¹, N Macdonald², K McCarthy³, H Ward⁴

¹ Sexually Transmitted Bacteria Reference Laboratory, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London, UK
² HIV and STI Section, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London, UK, and Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, London, UK
³ Department of Pathology, Cheltenham General Hospital, Cheltenham, UK
⁴ HIV and STI Section, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, London, UK, and Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr I Martin
Sexually Transmitted Bacteria Reference Laboratory, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, 61 Colindale Avenue, London NW9 5HT, UK; iona.martin@hpa.org.uk

Keywords: lymphogranuloma venereum; chlamydia trachomatis; biopsy

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections launched an alert in October 2004 to improve the awareness, diagnosis, and control of lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), a sexually transmitted chlamydial infection, following a series of outbreaks in Western Europe.¹ To date (9/3/2006), 334 cases of LGV have been diagnosed in 334 men. The case definition for a confirmed case of LGV is the presence of C trachomatis specific DNA, using two nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) with different primers, of serovars L1, L2, or L3, determined by genotyping (http://www.hpa.org.uk/infections/topics_az/hiv_and_sti/LGV/lgv.htm). All cases of LGV to date in the UK have been in men who have sex with men and typically present with proctitis and/or inguinal lymphadenopathy. Some of the men in the UK diagnosed with LGV reported long duration of symptoms presenting to gastroenterologists and having been wrongly diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease before referral to genitourinary medicine (GUM).

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