The study looked at a total of 160 koalas outside of Moreton Bay in Southeast Queensland, Australia. They did full physical examinations of every koala and clinical tests for things like Chlamydia. Koalas are known to get two kinds of Chlamydia ocular, and urogenital each with its own set of symptoms and transmission. They found that 31% of the population tested positive for Chlamydia, with 4% having only ocular, 17% having only urogenital, and 10% having both ocular and urogenital. They also found that 29% of the koalas that were between ages 9 months to 13 months have Chlamydia. Koalas aged under 13 months are considered sexually immature. The prevalence of Chlamydia in young koalas suggests that the mothers giving their offspring Chlamydia, as well as passing it onto other individuals through sex. This broadens the diseases capabilities of infecting more koalas and brings researchers one step closer to creating a vaccine.
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