Gonorrhea often has no symptoms, but it can cause serious health problems, even without symptoms. Most women with gonorrhea do not have any symptoms. Even when a woman has symptoms, they are often mild and can be mistaken for a bladder or vaginal infection.
Most women with gonorrhea don't have any symptoms. If you do get symptoms, they usually show up between 2 and 14 days after having sex with someone who's infected. Symptoms can also show up weeks later.
In women, gonorrhea can spread into the uterus or fallopian tubes and cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). The symptoms may be quite mild or can be very severe and can include abdominal pain and fever 13. PID can lead to internal abscesses and chronic pelvic pain.
Symptoms of gonorrhoea usually develop within about 2 weeks of being infected, although they sometimes do not appear until many months later. About 1 in 10 infected men and 5 in 10 infected women will not experience any obvious symptoms, which means the condition can go untreated for some time.
How will my healthcare provider know if I have gonorrhea? Most of the time, a healthcare provider will use a a urine sample to diagnose gonorrhea. However, if you have had oral and/or anal sex, your healthcare provider may use swabs to collect samples from your throat and/or rectum.
It wasn't believed to be, but recent studies have shown that it is actually possible to contract oral gonorrhea from kissing. There's accumulating evidence that kissing might be a common mode of gonorrhea transmission, though just how common requires more research.
If left untreated, gonorrhea usually resolves naturally, but can also cause serious health problems. For women this could include pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which can lead to ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the womb) and inability to have a baby.
The short answer
For example, someone might have tested negative for genital gonorrhea but not been tested for oral or anal gonorrhea, and potentially transmit the STI through anal or oral intercourse.
It takes 7 days for the medicine to work in your body and cure gonorrhea. If you have sex without a condom during the 7 days after taking the medicine, you could still pass the infection to your sex partners, even if you have no symptoms.
Gonorrhoea. Symptoms usually appear within 2 weeks of being infected but could start much later. They include: green or yellow discharge from the vagina or penis.
But what many people don't realize is that you can be at risk of getting an STI—like chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, HIV, HPV, syphilis, and trichomoniasis—without actually having sex.
Typical symptoms of gonorrhoea include a thick green or yellow discharge from the vagina or penis, pain when peeing and, in women, bleeding between periods. But around 1 in 10 infected men and almost half of infected women do not experience any symptoms.
Gonorrhea can be easily cured with antibiotics from a health care provider. However, if gonorrhea is not treated, it can cause permanent damage: Your risk of getting other STIs, like gonorrhea or HIV increases.
If 2 people who don't have any STDs have sex, it's not possible for either of them to get one. A couple can't create an STD from nothing — they have to get spread from one person to another.
As for gonorrhea, one study found that most infections in 16 female subjects “did not appear to resolve spontaneously,” as most were still infected after two months.
Which antibiotic is best for gonorrhea? Per CDC recommendations, many doctors prescribe dual therapy, including an injection of ceftriaxone, plus a tablet of either azithromycin or a treatment course of doxycycline. The CDC recommends a single dose of azithromycin, which has been shown to be effective.
How Common Is Oral Gonorrhea? Oral gonorrhea is far less common than gonorrhea that infects the genitals. It is observed in between 3% and 7% of men who have sex with other men, 0.4% of heterosexual men, and 0.1% of women.
Bacterial STIs
They can't survive in air or on surfaces (such as a toilet seat), making it virtually impossible for you to contract a bacterial STI in this way. Examples of bacterial STIs include: Gonorrhea: Spread through vaginal, anal, or oral sex without a condom or other barrier method.
You can definitely be re-infected with gonorrhea. The antibiotics only treat the gonorrhea you have today. If you are re-exposed to gonorrhea, you can be re-infected. The most common way to get gonorrhea re-infection is to have one partner be treated while the other is not.
This gonorrhea and chlamydia at-home test is a urine test — so a vaginal swab or blood sample is not required. To take the test, simply urinate in a collection cup and place your sample in the mail. We'll send your sample to one of the labs we use for testing (a prepaid shipping label is included within the kit).
You can get tested and treated at your local health department's STD clinic, a family planning clinic, a student health center, or an urgent care clinic. You can also find a clinic using GetTested and ask if they offer treatment for gonorrhea and chlamydia.
Gonorrhea. Urine testing for gonorrhea is the same as it is for chlamydia. If you have a vaginal or urethral infection it will show up in your urine, but infections in other parts of your body won't. If you've had anal or oral sex, a swab test of these areas is necessary.