Prevalence of Mycoplasma genitalium in a Southern California patient population

Mycoplasma genitalium as a cause of genitourinary sexually transmitted disease symptoms often goes underdiagnosed in many patient populations. We investigated a patient population in Southern California at high risk for Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and Neisseria gonorrhea (NG) infections to determine whether they also may be at high risk for Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) sexually transmitted infections that may be going untreated. We found that there was a relatively high prevalence of CT (13.9 %) and NG (9.0 %) in our population, but there was also a relatively high prevalence of undiagnosed MG infections (8.7 %). In this same patient population, there were few (0.5 %) subjects diagnosed with Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) infections; however, there were high numbers of coinfections identified for MG with CT and NG. We found high numbers of positive results in both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. We also identified that there were high numbers of subjects with genetic markers associated with resistance to macrolide antibiotics in the MG positive specimens. These data altogether strongly suggest that MG testing should be a routine part of screening for patient populations whether they are high- or normal-risk for sexually acquired infections.