Gonorrhea is caused by a specific bacterium called Neisseria Gonorrhoeae. Gonorrhea rapidly spreads by contact of infected area of the body. Both men and women are at risk of getting gonorrhea. As gonorrhea sometimes show no symptoms at all, a pregnant woman may infect her baby as it passes through the birth canal. Gonorrhea can cause serious complications to the newborn baby.

As soon as a person notices the symptoms of gonorrhea, a diagnosis test must be done for the diagnosis of the disease. If a person is diagnosed with gonorrhea he or she must undergo a treatment as soon as possible to get rid of the infection. If you think you’re infected or you have had a partner who may have been infected with gonorrhea, you must go and consult your doctor or gynecologist. The doctor will then conduct the diagnosis test. The doctor performs the diagnosis test taking a sample by swabbing the vagina or penis for discharge. The sample will then be analyzed at the laboratory.

What is gonorrhea? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? How can gonorrhea be diagnosed? How is gonorrhea treated?

If a person is diagnosed with gonorrhea infection, the doctor prescribes antibiotics for treating the infection. Anybody with whom the patient had had sex in the last 2 months, or last sexual partner if it has been more than 2 months since the patients last sexual experience, should also be tested and treated for gonorrhea immediately. A quick treatment will diminish the possibility of complications for a person who is a sexual partner and has gonorrhea. This lowers the chance of a person being reinfected if someone has sex with that partner again. Treating gonorrhea doesn’t make you immune to the disease; you can still be reinfected with the disease.

Several antibiotics have successfully cured gonorrhea in adolescents and adults. Though, drug-resistant variants of gonorrhea are growing in many regions of the world, including the United States. Thus successful treatment of gonorrhea is becoming more complex day by day. Since many people with gonorrhea also have other STDs, antibiotics for other sexually transmitted infections are generally given together. Individuals suffering from gonorrhea should be tested and treated for other STDs.

Antibiotics that may be used to treat gonorrhea include:

• Amoxicillin 2 g plus probenecid 1 g orally
• Ampicillin 2 to 3 g plus probenecid 1 g orally
• Azithromycin 2 g orally
• Cefixime or Suprax 400 mg orally
• Cefotaxime 500 mg by intramuscular injection
• Cefoxitin 2 g by intramuscular injection, plus probenecid 1 g orally
• Cefpodoxime (Vantin) 400 mg orally
• Ceftriaxone (Rocephin) 125 to 250 mg by intramuscular injection
• Ciprofloxacin 500 mg orally
• Levofloxacin 250 mg orally
• Ofloxacin 400 mg orally
• Spectinomycin 2 g by intramuscular injection

These drugs are all given as a single dose.

The level of tetracycline resistance in Neisseria gonorrhœae is now so high as to make it completely ineffective in most parts of the world.

The fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, levofloxacin) cannot be used in pregnancy. It is important to refer all sexual partners to be checked for gonorrhea to prevent spread of the disease and to prevent the patient from becoming re-infected with gonorrhea. Patients should also be offered screening for other sexually transmitted infections. In areas where co-infection with chlamydia is common, doctors may prescribe a combination of antibiotics, such as ceftriaxone with doxycycline or azithromycin, to treat both diseases.

Penicillin is ineffective at treating rectal gonorrhea: this is because other bacteria within the rectum produce ?-lactamases that destroy penicillin. All current treatments are less effective at treating gonorrhea of the throat, so the patient must be rechecked by throat swab 72 hours or more after being given treatment, and then retreated if the throat swab is still positive.

Although gonorrhea usually does not require follow-up (with the exception of rectal or pharyngeal disease), patients are usually advised to phone for results five to seven days after diagnosis to confirm that the antibiotic they received was likely to be effective. Patients are advised to abstain from sex during this time.

Drug resistant strains are known to exist.

Diagnosis of gonorrhea is done in laboratory after doing some tests. Several laboratory tests are available for the diagnosis of gonorrhea. A doctor or nurse can obtain a sample from the infected part of the body for testing. These parts may include cervix, urethra, rectum, or throat. Then the sample is send to the laboratory for analysis. Gonorrhea can also be diagnosed by urine testing in a laboratory if it is present in the cervix or urethra. A Gram stain is a quick laboratory test done for the diagnosis of gonorrhea in some clinics or doctor’s offices. A doctor examines the gram stain of a sample from a urethra or a cervix under a microscope to see if the gonorrhea bacterium is present or not. A Gram stain test works better for men than for women.

Though there are several laboratory tests available for gonorrhea, Healthcare providers test for gonorrhea in one of these two ways:

* Swab Test: A swab is taken from the urethra of a man, cervix of a woman, throat from the people who are engaged in oral sex, eye, and/or rectum from the people who have receptive anal sex. For women, the cervical swab is taken as part of a pelvic exam done with a speculum.

* Urine Test: Some Healthcare providers also use a urine test for the diagnosis of gonorrhea.

What is gonorrhea? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? How can gonorrhea be diagnosed? How is gonorrhea treated?

Once a sample is collected, it is sent to a laboratory for testing. Testing may involve growing gonorrhea from the sample, looking for bacterial DNA, depending upon the sample collected and on the laboratory. The sample is also grown for using antibodies to discover whether or not the sample contains any bacteria.

Some Healthcare providers can also perform a test called a Gram stain at the time of your visit in their office. For a gram stain test a sample is collected from the urethra or cervix. The sample is stained with a special dye and examined under the microscope, which makes it easier to discover Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium responsible for gonorrhea. Though a gram stain test provides faster results than other forms of testing, it is not always accurate as the other tests. Moreover some doctors are not equipped to provide it.

An infected person began to show symptoms of the disease after a few days or few weeks of exposure from the virus. The symptoms of gonorrhea in the girls are different than the boys and vice versa.

A girl infected with gonorrhea may show no symptoms at all or the symptoms may be so mild that they go unnoticed most of the time until they become more severe. A girl may experience a burning sensation while urinating or in some cases they will have a yellow-green vaginal discharge. Girls may also have vaginal bleeding during menstrual periods. The infection may become more widespread and can move into the uterus or fallopian tubes. In such cases a girl may suffer from pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) can cause abdominal pain, fever, and pain during carnal knowledge, as well as the symptoms given above may occur.

What is gonorrhea? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? How can gonorrhea be diagnosed? How is gonorrhea treated?

Guys infected with gonorrhea infection are much more likely to notice symptoms. But it may also happen that a might be suffering from a gonorrhea infection and have no symptoms at all. However, some men have signs or symptoms that take 2 to 5 days to appear after infection; symptoms can take as long as 30 days to appear. The infected person may not even know about his infection until the symptoms are visible. Guys often feel a burning sensation while urinating and yellowish-white discharge may transude from the urethra (at the tip of the penis). Gonorrhea can spread to the epididymis (the structure close to the testicle that helps in transporting sperm), causing pain and inflammation in the testicular region. This may result in scar tissue which might make a guy infertile.

Symptoms such as discharge, anal itching, soreness, bleeding, or painful bowel movements may occur in both men and women if they are infected with rectal infection. Rectal infection may also cause no symptoms. A sore throat may occur in case the throat is infected but generally causes no symptoms. The symptoms generally appear two to seven days after a person has been exposed to gonorrhea, and in case girls they may appear even later.

Gonorrhea is a very widespread communicable disease. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, more than 7 million people in the U.S. get fresh gonorrheal infections every year. Only about 1/2 of these infections are reported to CDC. In 2006, CDC was reported 358,366 cases of gonorrhea. The national gonorrhea rate declined during the period from 1975 to 1997. This became possible because of the implementation of the national gonorrhea control program in the mid-1970s. However, the national gonorrhea rate has increased for the second consecutive year, even after several years of stable gonorrhea rates. Out of per 100,000 persons, 120.9 persons were reported to be infected with gonorrhea in the year 2006.

What is gonorrhea? What are the symptoms of gonorrhea? How can gonorrhea be diagnosed? How is gonorrhea treated?

Anyone who is sexually active has a risk of getting gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is often found in young people between the ages of 15 to 30 who have had multiple sex partners. About 75% of reported cases of gonorrhea are attributed to the young people between the ages of 15 and 30. Particularly, women between the ages of 15 and 19 and men between the ages of 20 and 24 are at great risk of getting infected with gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is reported most often in the urban areas than in rural areas.

Though gonorrhea can be detected by its symptoms, one can be sure about the infection only after the diagnosis. If diagnosed with gonorrhea, the patient and the sex partners he or she have had must be treated for the disease. If it is left untreated, gonorrhea can cause serious and permanent health problems in both women and men.