Article Text
Letter
Was the Papanicolaou smear responsible for the decline of Trichomonas vaginalis?
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There has been a dramatic decline in the prevalence of trichomoniasis in Australia over the past 30 years. In 1979, 17.8% of women attending a Sydney STI clinic had Trichomonas vaginalis infection.1 By 1998 less than 1% of non-Indigenous women presenting to family planning and STI clinics in another jurisdiction were diagnosed with the condition2 and most Australian urban pathology laboratories do not diagnose a case from one year to the next. Similar observations have been reported elsewhere: the rate of detection of trichomoniasis in Papanicolaou (Pap) smears in Denmark fell from 19% in 1967 to <2% in 1997, …
Footnotes
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Conflict of interest: None.