Gonorrhea, sometimes colloquially called “the clap,” is a common bacterial infection transmitted by sexual contact. This disease is relatively easy to treat with modern antibiotics, but it can cause some serious problems if left untreated. About half of all gonorrhea sufferers, especially female ones, have no symptoms at all. This makes it important for patients to get gonorrhea testing if they suspect that they are at risk, even if they do not look or feel sick.

Gonorrhea Transmission
This disease is caused by the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium and is transmitted from one person to another through infected bodily fluids. Patients can get gonorrhea through oral, anal or vaginal sex, but the risk is different depending on anatomy. From a single act of vaginal intercourse with an infected male, a person has a 60 to 80 percent risk of getting a gonorrhea infection. From a single act of vaginal intercourse with an infected woman, the risk to males is about 20 percent. Mothers can transmit this disease to their infants during vaginal birth, as well. Because of this uneven risk factor and the dangers for people who wish to become pregnant, some patients should get tested more often than others.

Signs and Symptoms of Gonorrhea
Not everyone who gets gonorrhea will have symptoms. Those who do tend to show signs of the infection between two and 14 days after exposure, with most symptoms occurring between four and six days after exposure, have discharge from the sexual organs, as well as painful urination, lower abdominal pain and discomfort during sex. Gonorrhea infections of the throat can occur from oral sex, especially when performed on male partners. About 90 percent of these cases have no symptoms at all. The remaining 10 percent tend to have little more than a sore throat.

Rare cases of gonorrhea can cause infections of the joints, leading to pain and swelling. This is most likely to occur when the disease travels through the bloodstream to distant locations in the body. This behavior can also result in skin lesions. In extremely rare cases, the bacteria eventually settle in the heart or spinal column, causing endocarditis or meningitis.

Both of these problems occur more often in people with compromised immune systems from immune illness or immune suppressing drugs. These rarer symptoms happen in between 0.6 and 3 percent of females and 0.4 and 0.7 percent of males. Untreated gonorrhea in females can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, or PID, which leads to long-term pain, infertility and problems with pregnancy. In males, the condition can inflame the sperm ducts, eventually leading to infertility.

In infants, gonorrhea contracted from the mother during birth can damage the eyes. This condition is called opthamalia neonatorum and causes symptoms similar to conjunctivitis. The problem appears within the first five days after birth and includes inflammation and discharge from both eyes. Most infants are treated with erythromycin ointment at birth to prevent blindness from this type of infection, but this does not prevent the need for diagnosis and treatment of both mother and child.

Testing for Gonorrhea
It’s important for anyone who may have been exposed to this bacterium to have a urine test or a test of specific bodily fluids to detect the presence of the bacteria. This test is usually performed along with one for chlamydia, since the two diseases can easily be detected from the same sample and are common in the same people. Gonorrhea is the second most common bacterial STI after chlamydia. About 46 percent of people under the age of 39 who have gonorrhea also have chlamydia.

People with multiple sexual partners or any partner who has had the disease in the past are at increased risk for gonorrhea, as are any people who have had sex without a condom. Anyone who is sexually-active can get this disease, however. Regular testing is recommended, especially for female patients, since their risk of contracting this disease is higher.

The actual test can be a molecular test, a culture, a gram stain or a polymerase chain reaction. The PCR test is the newest and most effective method, but all forms of testing work. Anyone who tests positive for this STI should also have other STI tests performed to ensure good health or effective treatment. No test preparation is needed for any gonorrhea test.

Gonorrhea Treatments
Gonorrhea is traditionally treated with antibiotics, but it has developed resistances to many of the older ones. Penicillin, fluoroquinolones and tetracycline are no longer considered effective against gonorrhea in most populations. Injectable ceftriaxone is one of the antibiotics that still affects this disease, though resistant strains are known. Patients who undergo treatment for this STI without relief of symptoms should have a culture performed to determine the type of gonorrhea in question. This allows doctors to more effectively treat and cure the disease.