Chlamydia is cured with antibiotics, most commonly doxycycline taken twice daily for seven days. This is the preferred first-line treatment recommended by the CDC, and it clears the infection in the vast majority of cases. A single dose of azithromycin was once considered equally effective, but several countries have moved away from it as a first choice due to evidence of reduced effectiveness.
The Standard Treatment
For an uncomplicated chlamydia infection (meaning it hasn’t spread beyond the cervix, urethra, or rectum), the go-to antibiotic is doxycycline. You take it twice a day for seven days. It’s cheap, widely available, and highly effective. The alternative is a single, one-time dose of azithromycin, which used to be the preferred option because of its convenience. That changed after research showed doxycycline performs better, particularly for rectal infections.
The shift away from azithromycin has a biological explanation. Lab studies found that azithromycin can push chlamydia bacteria into a dormant, inactive state rather than killing them outright. These dormant bacteria aren’t technically “resistant” in the traditional sense, but they can reactivate after the drug clears from your system, leading to treatment failure. This effect appears especially pronounced in rectal tissue, where the drug may not reach effective concentrations. Doxycycline doesn’t have this problem.
Regardless of which antibiotic you’re prescribed, the infection is fully curable. Unlike viral STIs such as herpes or HIV, chlamydia is caused by bacteria and antibiotics eliminate it completely. However, being cured doesn’t make you immune. You can get chlamydia again if you’re exposed to it.
What to Expect During Treatment
If you’re prescribed the seven-day doxycycline course, it’s important to finish every dose even if you feel fine (chlamydia often causes no symptoms at all). Missing doses reduces the drug’s ability to fully clear the bacteria. Common side effects include stomach upset and increased sun sensitivity, so avoiding prolonged sun exposure during treatment helps.
You need to avoid sex for at least seven days after a single-dose treatment or until you’ve completed the full seven-day course, whichever applies. If you still have symptoms at the end of treatment, wait until those resolve too. This waiting period protects your partners from infection and prevents reinfection from an untreated partner.
Treatment During Pregnancy
Doxycycline is not safe during pregnancy because it can affect fetal bone and tooth development. Pregnant individuals are treated with alternative antibiotics that are safe for the developing baby. Your provider will select an appropriate option based on your specific situation and how far along you are. The infection is just as curable during pregnancy, but treating it promptly matters because untreated chlamydia can cause preterm delivery or pass to the baby during birth.
What Happens If It Spreads
When chlamydia goes untreated, it can travel deeper into the reproductive tract and cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in women. PID is a more serious infection involving the uterus, fallopian tubes, or ovaries, and it requires a longer, more aggressive antibiotic course. Treatment typically involves a combination of antibiotics taken for 14 days instead of seven, because PID involves multiple types of bacteria beyond just chlamydia. Some cases require IV antibiotics in a hospital setting.
PID can lead to lasting damage even after the infection is cleared, including scarring in the fallopian tubes that increases the risk of infertility and ectopic pregnancy. This is the main reason early detection and treatment of chlamydia matters so much. The infection itself is simple to cure, but the complications from waiting are not always reversible.
Getting Your Partner Treated
Curing your own infection doesn’t help much if your sexual partner still carries it. Reinfection from an untreated partner is one of the most common reasons people test positive again after treatment. The CDC recommends that all recent sexual partners get treated, and many states allow a practice called expedited partner therapy (EPT). With EPT, your healthcare provider can give you a prescription or medication to bring directly to your partner, so they can be treated without needing their own clinic visit first. This is particularly useful when a partner is unlikely to seek care on their own.
EPT is legal in most U.S. states, though the specifics vary. It’s considered especially helpful for treating male partners of women diagnosed with chlamydia.
Retesting After Treatment
You should get retested three months after treatment. This isn’t because the antibiotics might have failed (treatment failure with doxycycline is rare). It’s because reinfection rates are high. People who’ve had chlamydia once are at elevated risk of getting it again, often from the same untreated partner or a new exposure. The three-month retest catches repeat infections early before they cause complications or spread further.
A test taken too soon after treatment, such as within a few weeks, can give a false positive because it may detect dead bacterial DNA that hasn’t cleared from your body yet. Waiting the full three months gives you an accurate result.
Antibiotic Resistance: A Low but Growing Concern
Unlike gonorrhea, which has become resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics, chlamydia still responds well to standard treatment. Confirmed antibiotic resistance in chlamydia remains extremely rare. That said, sporadic cases of reduced susceptibility to both doxycycline and azithromycin have been documented in lab settings, and researchers have identified potential resistance genes that could become more relevant over time. The bacteria’s ability to enter a dormant state when exposed to certain drugs complicates the picture, because this persistence mechanism doesn’t show up on traditional resistance tests.
For now, if you take your full course of doxycycline as prescribed, the overwhelming likelihood is a complete cure. The infection clears, and you move on.