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Gonorrhea
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Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted disease (STD) and the mostcommon bacterial infection in adults. In the United States, approximately 1 million cases are reported each year, most occurring in people under age 30. In its early stages, the disease may cause no symptoms and therefore can be spread by unsuspecting victims. In females, gonorrhea often remains asymptomatic but can lead to vaginal itching, discharge, or uterine bleeding and other serious complications. An infected woman who gives birth can transmit the disease to her infant, most often resulting in childhood blindness. As a precaution, silver nitrate is administered to the eyes of newborns to prevent this condition.
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Gonorrhea is a very common infectious disease. CDC estimates that more than 700,000 persons in the U.S. get new gonorrheal infections each year. Only about half of these infections are reported to CDC. In 2006, 358,366 cases of gonorrhea were reported to CDC. In the period from 1975 to 1997, the national gonorrhea rate declined, following the implementation of the national gonorrhea control program in the mid-1970s. After several years of stable gonorrhea rates... the national gonorrhea rate increased for the second consecutive year. In 2006, the rate of reported gonorrheal infections was 120.9 per 100,000 persons.
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Gonorrhea is a curable sexually transmitted disease (STD) caused by a bacterium called Neisseria gonorrhoeae. These bacteria can infect the genital tract, the mouth, and the rectum. In women, the opening (cervix) to the womb (uterus) from the birth canal is the first place of infection. The disease ... can spread into the womb and fallopian tubes, resulting in pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). PID affects more than 1 million women in this country every year and can cause infertility in as many as 10 percent of infected women and tubal (ectopic) pregnancy.
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Gonorrhea can cause eye infections in babies born to infected mothers, even if the mother has no symptoms at the time of delivery. Chlamydia can ... be passed from mother to child during birth. Infected newborn infants develop drainage from the eyes within 2 weeks of birth and the eyelids become puffy, red, and tender. Gonorrhea may cause perforation of the cornea and very significant destruction of the deeper eye structures while chlamydia is somewhat less destructive. Hospitals require silver nitrate or, more often today, antibiotic drops in a newborn's eyes to prevent these diseases.
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Gonorrhea was described in early writings from Egypt, China, and Japan. Warnings against "unclean discharge from the body" appear in the Bible. A diagnostic description of the disease was written in the Middle Ages. In the late fifteenth century, a syphilis epidemic raged throughout Europe, though at that time syphilis was often confused with gonorrhea, and some believed that gonorrhea was the first stage of syphilis. The gram-negative bacteria that causes gonorrhea was discovered in 1879 by Albert Neisser (1855-1916), a German physician who went on to identify the bacterial cause for leprosy. German immunologist Paul Ehrlich named the bacterium gonococcus.
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Gonorrhea has become more difficult and expensive to treat since the 1970s, due to the increased resistance of gonorrhea to certain antibiotics. In fact, according to projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30% of the strains of gonorrhea were resistant to routine antibiotics in 1994, and resistance has been increasing steadily. Furthermore, many patients have both gonorrhea and chlamydial infections. Therefore, two drug treatment regimens are common. Medications used to treat gonorrhea include ceftriaxone, cefixime, spectinomycin, ciprofloxacin, and ofloxacin. Ceftriaxone and doxycycline or azithromycin are often given simultaneously to treat possible co-existing chlamydia (in pregnant women, erythromycin should be substituted for the aforementioned anti-chlamydial agents).
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Gonorrhea