Gonorrhea

Don't be ignorant about this disease
Image by Nicki Varkevisser CC BY 2.0 Cropped

Risk - any sex with another

Often there are no symptoms

Street names

the dose, the clap, morning drip

Facts about gonorrhea

  • Any sex act can transmit gonorrhea – vaginal or anal intercourse as well as oral sex.
  • Caused by a bacterium called Neisseria gonorrhoeae.
  • Ejaculation is not needed to pass or catch it.
  • Disease is not caused by straining, stress, failure to bathe, or having sex too often.
  • It does not develop from another disease or become another disease.
  • It is not spread by kissing, toilet seats, door knobs, pools, tubs, clothes, or utensils.

Description

Gonorrhea is a disease usually occurring inside of your body and usually starts inside your penis, causing an infection of the urethra, which is the tube down the middle of your penis that carries urine out of your body.

  • Takes 3-5 days (up to 30 days) before a guy will notice symptoms in his penis.
  • 80% of women have no symptoms at all even though they are infected, therefore they may not know that they are giving you the same disease.
  • Disease can be transmitted to someone else before symptoms occur.

Symptoms

  • In guys, very painful burning feeling when urinating and a thick, yellow-greenish discharge (pus) or "drip" from the penis. Swelling may occur.
  • Without treatment, it may spread to your prostate, bladder, testicles.
  • May cause sterility if untreated (you won’t be able to have children).
  • Gonorrhea in the throat results from having oral sex and causes dry, sore, scratchy feeling.
  • Cervical infection in women may produce a discharge like a man’s.
  • Wiping the discharge from the vagina may cause disease to spread.
  • May spread from cervix to womb and fallopian tubes causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) with fever, pain in lower stomach, nausea, backache. This happens in 10-20% of women who go untreated.
Gonorrhea symptom

Treatment

  • Easily treated and cured with antibiotics.
  • No home remedies or over-the-counter drugs work.
  • Antibiotics kill the bacteria but cannot repair body damage already done.
  • Babies born to infected moms risk blindness.

Recurrence

Having gonorrhea before does NOT protect a person from getting it again.

Prevention

  • Only 100% completely safe option - choose not to have sex!
  • Latex condoms work if used properly.
  • There is no way to know if your sex partner is infected.
  • See your doctor if you have questions or experience symptoms.

Individual help

If you have further questions or concerns about STDs, ask Dr. Mike, an internationally known Clinical Microbiologist specializing in STDs. He has worked extensively with teenage boys and contributed all the information and STD images on the disease pages here.

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