Gonorrhea – Overview

Transcript

“Gonorrhea is quite a common sexually transmitted infection. So how is gonorrhea transmitted essentially through sexual contact? Now that can be penile vaginal sex. So sexual intercourse, it can be anal sex. It can be oral sex, but any type of sexual contact where there’s no protection or prevention in place can actually lead to gonorrhea transmission. And the symptoms of gonorrhea in women include painful urination. So burning, when you go pee, it can include pus or increased vaginal discharge. It can include if it’s in other mucus membranes, there can be things like a sore throat and there can also be pain in the joints. So gonorrhea can become a systemic illness that can actually transfer through your body. But most commonly gonorrhea is localized to the vagina in women or the penis and urethra in men. So how do we detect gonorrhea? We detect gonorrhea with a vaginal or cervical swab or with a penal urethral swab. And that’s something that your doctor would have to do for you.

What is gonorrhea treatment? Well, gonorrhea can be treated quite easily with antibiotic medications that your doctor can administer and certain medications that treat gonorrhea will also treat other sexually transmitted infections. We also know that gonorrhea in women can actually climb up from the lower genital tract, the vagina, the cervix, the urethra into the upper genital tract or the uterus and the fallopian tubes. And if that happens, it can turn into something called a pelvic inflammatory disease, which can potentially lead to scarring of the fallopian tubes and can potentially lead to infertility. So how do you protect yourself from gonorrhea? Essentially, you want to make sure that you limit your sexual partners, that you check, if your sexual partners are sexually active with other people, because the more people that are sexually active with each other, the more likely the chances of spread.

You also want to make sure that your partner, for example, has a negative sexually transmitted infection screen, and those screens can be done at most clinics. And you want to make sure that you use a condom and either a condom on the male penis or a condom to protect the female genitalia, both would be somewhat effective against preventing gonorrhea. And are there other things that can cause gonorrhea to be worse? Actually, if you have gonorrhea, you can be further impacted by other sexually transmitted infections because it creates a raw inflamed area that can ultimately lead to more transmission of, say, other infections like chlamydia, or it actually makes a person more prone to HIV or AIDS infection as well because of that increased inflammation in the lower genital tract. “