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Fast Facts: What You Need to Know About Recurrent Vulvovaginal Candidiasis (Chronic Yeast Infection)
What happens when you just can’t shake a yeast infection?
Jan 26, 2022
May 30, 2024
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Sarah Kim
Sarah Kim is a freelance journalist and writer. She holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Barnard College, Columbia University and M.S. from Columbia Journalism School. Her master's thesis project chronicled the various ways the justice and healthcare systems failed domestic violence survivors with disabilities. Sarah herself lives with cerebral palsy.
Her journalistic work focuses on the intersectionality of race, socioeconomic status, culture/entertainment, and politics on people with disabilities, particularly women. Sarah has written for TIME, Forbes, Glamour, The Daily Beast, The Mighty, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and more. When she is not doing journalism, she works on a book in collaboration with Marcalee Alexander on sexuality and disability.
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Medically reviewed by Dr. Mary Jane Minkin
They’re itchy, annoying and sometimes painful. They’re also very common in women, but no one really wants to talk about them: yeast infections.
The technical term for these infections is vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), and they’re caused by an overgrowth of the fungus Candida, usually Candida albicans, often referred to as yeast. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 75% of women will get VVC at least once in their life.
The symptoms of a yeast infection are vaginal itching, burning, irritation and inflammation. Some women who have a yeast infection may experience abnormal vaginal discharge and pain during sex or while urinating.
Although most yeast infections go away with oral or topical treatment, some don’t respond to medication and last for a long time or keep cropping up again. If you have three or more episodes of yeast infection in 12 months, the infection is considered a chronic yeast infection. This is called recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC), a different condition than VVC.
Read more to find about the symptoms, causes and treatment options for RVVC.
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