MIAMI—Today, CLEAR announced that it identified a rare strain of Chlamydia in its recent tests in Miami. The strain has had prominence in Europe, with very rare cases in the U.S.—until now. CLEAR has worked with its equipment manufacturer, a publicly traded, multi-billion dollar healthcare conglomerate, and utilized its highly sophisticated testing equipment to validate CLEAR’s findings and alert other laboratories of the presence of the bacteria in U.S. patients.
“We have been seeing an unusually high number of positive cases in the last several weeks. We also heard from our customers that they were getting conflicting results from other labs, so we decided to look into it further. We are proud and excited to be the first lab in the adult industry to have identified this rare and previously undetected strain. Until now, this silent STD had the potential to cause health issues for performers who would have gone untreated and disrupt production,” said CLEAR’s CEO Humberto Buniotto.
As part of the compliance program and commitment to quality, CLEAR adheres to all regulatory requirements for proficiency testing and, in addition, periodically sends out tests for comparative testing to be processed at other laboratories, including both positive and negative results. When working with the manufacturer, CLEAR’s positive Chlamydia results matched 100 percent with its equipment manufacturer's findings. After re-running the samples and ordering further DNA sequencing, the manufacturer confirmed CLEAR’s positive results included the European strain. The company had done a similar correlation study with LabCorp earlier this year, which found that about three out of 500,000 patients tested positive for the rare strain.
CLEAR has made available a redacted version of the manufacturer’s report. To see the report, click here.
According to the CDC, Chlamydia may seem like a harmless STD. However, it can cause permanent damage to a woman’s reproductive system and make it difficult or impossible to get pregnant later. Further, Chlamydia can also cause a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the womb).
Visit the CDC's website for more information on Chlamydia and how it can affect patients.
CLEAR urges adult performers to avoid “result shopping” since the strain may be linked to a higher rate of asymptomatic infections and to ensure they are tested at PASS-certified facilities that can identify this and other rare strains and prevent them from spreading further.
