Sunday, May 26, 2013

STD Tests for Home Use

Yearly, there are actually millions of people who get victimized by STDs. However, this is poorly recognized given that several STDs lack any visible, characterizing sign during their early phases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that Chlamydia alone infects more than one million annually. Many victims fail to realize that they house the bacteria, unlike cases of more easily recognizable gonorrhea and syphilis. The hidden nature of Chlamydia results of serious and at times irreparable damage to the victims' reproductive systems and the prenatally infected babies, who may succumb to pulmonary disorders or blindness.

Although health professionals are very trustworthy and effective treatments for controlling STDs are plenty, those diseases stay rampant due to the unwillingness of victims or suspecting patients to immediately seek medical attention. Brought about by this fact, experts in the field of disease detection have designed the STD home test.

Anyone can buy an STD test kit online or locally. Users are only required to acquire urine, blood or oral samples and have the samples submitted to the laboratory for fast and reliable analysis. Within one or few days, the user will be informed through private text or email of the result. There are also test kits that no longer require laboratory analysis and produce results right away like a pregnancy test kit. A positive result simply means swallowing some pride and immediately visiting the nearest doctor for disease suppression.

It will be helpful to know that an STD home test kit may significantly vary from another due to the fact that STDs are caused by a wide array of agents. STDs can be classified into three sets- parasitic, bacterial and viral. STDs caused by parasites such as lice infestation and trichomoniasis are the most obvious among the three groups. A number of them can be cured without any professional intervention. Bacterial STDs include gonorrhea and syphilis. These infections can be cured by antibiotics and therefore clinical consultation is required. Viral STDs are brought upon by the smallest causative agents. These agents include the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS, herpes virus and human papillomavirus which is blamed on almost all cervical cancers. These diseases are the hardest to manage and many non-curable STDs fall under this category.

Like what was mentioned earlier, some diseases can be detected using an at-home test kit, which the customer can completely utilize without any external help. There are other kits that require user-collected samples to be submitted to laboratories. On the contrary, there are also tests wherein only trained professionals can perform the sample collection. STD tests can also be separated in terms of whether a battery of tests is conducted on the collected specimen or only one type of test is being performed.

Various STD home test kits require different samples. There are STD test kits that require anal, vaginal or penile swabs. On the other hand, there also exists STD test kit that requires either urine or blood sample. The required amount of sample is specified in the manual of the test kit. Typically, the kit contains all the necessary containers and tools for sample extraction.

To understand the dynamics of STD tests, it will be worthy to look at two dissimilar methods of HIV testing. One method involves Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR. This needs blood specimen and requires less than one day for result identification. The alternative method requires a urine sample which can be properly collected without any external help unlike the blood sample. This other method requires around fourteen days for completion.

Individuals who frequently have sex especially with more than one intimate partner are strongly encouraged by CDC to undergo routine STD tests at least twice a year. Using any appropriate and reliable home test can lead to the extermination of diseases long before the outbreak of symptoms. Although suppliers of test kits can be easily located, it can't be expected that everyone will order a test kit. A single STD test costs around $50 to more than $200 - a price range not everyone is willing to invest in. For those who don't intend to buy any STD test kit, diligent practice of protected sex may potentially reduce the chance of needing frequent STD screening.

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