Ten Things Sexually Active People Need to Know about Avoiding Gonorrhea

If you are sexually active, and especially if you are sexually active with multiple partners or your partner has sex with multiple partners, here are ten things you need to know about how to avoiding contracting gonorrhea.

• Any kind of sex can transmit gonorrhea. It does not have to be penile-vaginal sex.

• People who have had gonorrhea before tend to think they won't get it again. Unfortunately, the immune system doesn't build up any kind of resistance to the disease. Just because you have had it once doesn't mean you can't have it again.

• While you are being treated for gonorrhea, you can spread the disease. It is important to abstain from sex with another person until you have been told your infection has been resolved, and they have been treated, too.

• Using condoms reduces your risk of getting gonorrhea from an infected partner by about 25%. You are only slightly less likely to get the disease if you use condoms (although there are other reasons you may choose to use barrier contraception).

• Symptoms of gonorrhea can show up where you wouldn't expect them. If gonorrhea begins to spread from the sex organs, for example, one of the places it is especially likely to cause inflammation is the knee joint. Itching and burning "down there" followed by joint pain is a sign a visit to the doctor is urgent.

• In women, lower back pain is an early sign of a complication of gonorrhea (or chlamydia) known as pelvic inflammatory disease, or PID. Again, medical care is urgent to prevent serious complications.

• When men experience swelling of the testicles after infection with gonorrhea, it is usually in just one testicle, and accompanied by discharge from the tip of the penis.

• Any place there is sexual contact can be infected with gonorrhea, but some kinds of sexual activity are less likely to result in symptoms. In a study of pornographic film actors, 28% tested positive for gonorrhea and/or chlamydia. However, 91% of actors who had gonorrhea in the throat had not noticed their symptoms and 95% of actors who had rectal gonorrhea had not noticed their symptoms. The disease is most likely to be spread by unprotected sex with people who do not even know they have it.

• Changes in the pH of the vagina make women more susceptible to infection when they are having their periods and when they are pregnant. Women infected with gonorrhea at these times are more likely to have a disseminated infection, one that travels through their bloodstreams.

• In the United States, gonorrhea is more common than syphilis, in most racial groups. In Asia and Africa, syphilis is more common than gonorrhea. Syphilis does not cause painful symptoms at first, although gonorrhea usually does.