How is gonorrhea contracted

People who have gonorrhea should also be tested for other STDs. How is gonorrhea diagnosed? What is the treatment for gonorrhea? What about partners? How can gonorrhea be prevented? Where can I get more information? Sexually transmitted infections among US women and men: Prevalence and incidence estimates, Sex Transm Dis ; in press. Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance, Asymptomatic gonorrhea in men. N Engl J Med , 3 , — High incidence of new sexually transmitted infections in the year following a sexually transmitted infection: a case for rescreening.

Ann Intern Med , 8 , — A trial of minocycline given after exposure to prevent gonorrhea. N Engl J Med , 19 , — Wallin J. Gonorrhea in a 1-year study of patients attending the VD unit in Uppsala. Brit J Vener Dis , 51, 41—47 Risk of acquiring gonorrhea and prevalence of abnormal adnexal findings among women recently exposed to gonorrhea.

JAMA , 23 , — Clinical spectrum of gonococcal infection in women. Lancet , 1 , — Female gonorrhea: its relation to abnormal uterine bleeding, urinary tract symptoms, and cervicitis. Obstet Gynecol , 45 2 , — Anorectal gonococcal infection. Ann Intern Med , 86, — Clinical spectrum of pharyngeal gonococcal infection. N Engl J Med , 4 , — Bro-Jorgensen A, Jensen T.

Gonococcal pharyngeal infections: report of cases. Brit J Vener Dis , 49, — Differences in some clinical and laboratory parameters in acute salpingitis related to culture and serologic findings. Am J Obstet Gynecol , 7 , — Etiology, manifestations and therapy of acute epididymitis: prospective study of 50 cases. J Urol , 6 , — Disseminated gonococcal infection. Ann Intern Med , 74, — Fleming D, Wasserheit J.

From epidemiological synergy to public health policy and practice: the contribution of other sexually transmitted diseases to sexual transmission of HIV infection. Sex Transm DIs , 75 1 , 3—17 Gonococcal sepsis secondary to fetal monitoring. Am J Obstet Gynecol , 4 , — Preventive Services Task Force. Medically Reviewed.

Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted disease STD , with about 1. It is particularly common among to year-olds. Gonorrhea is highly contagious and is the second most commonly reported notifiable disease in the United States. You can get it by having unprotected vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has it. It can spread even if a man doesn't ejaculate during sex. In women, gonorrhea often doesn't cause symptoms.

If a woman does experience symptoms, they are typically mild and can be mistaken for a bladder or vaginal infection. According to Planned Parenthood, symptoms in women may include:. If symptoms are present, they can include the following:. Rectal gonorrhea can cause anal discharge, itching, pain, bleeding, as well as painful bowel movements in men and women. Gonorrhea in the throat can cause a sore throat pharyngitis or swollen lymph nodes but it usually doesn't lead to any other symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic.

However, in rare cases, it can be passed on to other people through kissing or oral sex. Both men and women can get gonorrhea in the mouth, urethra, eyes, and anus, and in women it can also infect the cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes.

Both sexes can also have the infection and not know it, which is one reason that regular STD testing is a good idea if you have any risk factors for acquiring a gonorrhea infection. The cause of gonorrhea, the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, can infect the mucous membranes of the reproductive tract in men and women, as well as those of the mouth, throat, eyes, and rectum. Gonorrhea is diagnosed using a lab test that requires either a urine sample or a swab taken from the urethra for men or the cervix or vagina for women.

If a person has had anal or oral sex, and a rectal or pharyngeal infection is suspected, a swab specimen may be collected from the throat or the rectum for testing. The recommended method for gonorrhea testing is the nucleic acid amplification test, which detects the genetic material of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in the urine or swab sample provided. In a second type of lab test, called a culture, the sample is placed in a container to see whether gonorrhea bacteria grow over several days, according to LabTestsOnline.

The CDC recommends that the following groups of people get tested for gonorrhea regularly:. Prognosis of Gonorrhea When gonorrhea is diagnosed and treated in a timely way, people usually make a complete recovery.

In some cases where treatment is delayed and pelvic inflammatory disease develops, it can cause infertility, scarred fallopian tubes which increase the risk of tubal pregnancy in women , ectopic pregnancy whereby pregnancy occurs outside the womb , and chronic abdominal pain. Gonorrhea gets better very quickly with antibiotic therapy — usually within a few days.

However, if your symptoms persist for longer than a few days after you are treated, contact your healthcare provider. People with gonorrhea who are cured of it once with antibiotics can still get the infection again. Over the years, gonorrhea has become resistant to almost all of the classes of antibiotics once used to treat it. As of December , the CDC recommends a single milligram mg intramuscular dose of the antibiotic Rocephin ceftriaxone for uncomplicated gonorrhea.

Treatment for coinfection with Chlamydia trachomatis with oral doxycycline mg twice daily for seven days should be administered when chlamydial infection has not been excluded. Be sure to tell those who you have sex with that you are being treated for gonorrhea so they can be treated, too.

This will help you avoid passing it back and forth to each other. There does appear to be potential for the mouthwash Listerine to help with gonorrhea control. In one small study published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, researchers instructed men with pharyngeal gonorrhea gonorrhea of the throat to gargle with Listerine for one minute.

A control group of men gargled with a saline solution. Five minutes after gargling, the men received pharyngeal swabs to see what effect, if any, the Listerine had had on the amount of N.

Even so, all the men in the study were then treated with antibiotics to cure their gonorrhea. But there are ways you can lower your risk of getting the disease while still being sexually active, such as the following:. Gonorrhea in a pregnant woman can increase the risk for miscarriage and premature birth, according to the American Pregnancy Association. Pregnant women with gonorrhea can also pass it to their baby during childbirth, which can cause a severe eye infection possibly leading to blindness, a joint infection, or a deadly blood infection in their infant.

Women with untreated gonorrhea are at risk for pelvic inflammatory disease PID , which may cause no symptoms or may cause pain in the pelvis, lower abdomen, or lower back. If left untreated, PID can lead to:. Complications of gonorrhea in men may include epididymitis , an inflammation of the epididymis, a long coiled tube at the back of the testicles that stores sperm and carries it between the testicles and the vas deferens, which conveys it to the urethra. Epididymitis can cause testicular or scrotal pain, and, if left untreated, infertility.

Symptoms of DGI commonly include joint or tendon pain, a skin rash , and fever. More advanced stages of DGI cause septic, or infectious, arthritis, in which the bacteria directly invade the joint space, according to the Merck Manual. If gonorrhea spreads to the joints, it can cause a type of arthritis known as gonococcal arthritis, which is typically experienced in large joints such as the knees, wrists, or ankles.

If a person is not treated for gonorrhea, there is a good chance complications will occur. Women frequently suffer from pelvic inflammatory disease PID , a painful condition that occurs when the infection spreads throughout the reproductive organs. PID can lead to sterilization in females. Men may suffer from swelling of the testicles and penis. Both sexes may suffer from arthritis, skin problems and other organ infections caused by the spread of gonorrhea within the body.

Navigation menu. Who gets gonorrhea? How is gonorrhea spread? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? How soon do symptoms appear? When and for how long is a person able to spread gonorrhea? Does past infection with gonorrhea make a person immune? What is the treatment for gonorrhea? What happens if gonorrhea goes untreated??