[Chlamydia in sweden.]

In the end of the 70s only five laboratories in Sweden could perform Chlamydial culture. Today more than 33 laboratories perform some kind of Chlamydial identification but a number of different tests are used and there is a lack of standardisation. Probably the introduction of tests based on DNA amplification will improve the situation. Up to the beginning of the 80s Chlamydial disease in Sweden was in an uncontrolled hyper endemic state. The number of Chlamydial infections has been estimated to about 100,000 per year, that is more than twice the number of gonococcal infections in the peak year of 1970. During the 80s culture was increasingly used to identify new cases. With the new act on contagious diseases in 1988 an epidemiological approach was generally adopted.