COMMON SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS: GONORRHEA. HEPATITIS Â VIRUS (HBV)

Gonorrhea

Gonorrhea (gone-o-RHEE-a) is a bacterium that can cause sterility, arthritis, and heart problems. In women, gonorrhea can cause PID, which can result in ectopic pregnancy or sterility. During pregnancy, gonorrhea infections can cause premature labor and stillbirth. To prevent serious eye infections that are caused by gonorrhea in newborn babies, drops of silver nitrate or antibiotics are routinely put into the eyes of infants immediately after delivery. More than 1 million cases of gonorrhea are reported every year in the United States.

Common Symptoms

• women: frequent, often burning urination; menstrual irregularities; pelvic (or lower abdominal) pain; pain during sex or pelvic examination; a green or yellow-green discharge from the vagina; swelling or tenderness of the vulva; and even arthritic pain

• men: a puslike discharge from the urethra or pain during urination

Eighty percent of the women and 10 percent of the men with gonorrhea show no symptoms. If they appear, they appear in women within 10 days. It takes from one to 14 days for symptoms to appear in men.

How Gonorrhea Is Spread: Vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse.

Diagnosis: Microscopic examination of urethral or vaginal discharges. Cultures taken from the cervix, throat, urethra, or rectum.

Treatment: Both partners can be successfully treated with oral antibiotics. Often, people with gonorrhea also have chlamydia. They must be treated for both infections at the same time.

Protection: Condoms offer very good protection.

Hepatitis Â Virus (HBV)

Although 90 to 95 percent of adults with HBV recover completely, the virus can cause severe liver disease and death. Unless they are treated within an hour of birth, 90 percent of the infants born to women with HBV will carry the virus. Pregnant women who may have been exposed to HBV should consider being tested before giving birth so that their babies can be vaccinated at birth or treated if they become ill. Like many other viruses, HBV remains in the body for life.

HBV is the only sexually transmitted infection that is preventable with vaccination. But about 200,000 Americans get HBV every year because they have not been vaccinated. There are now about 1.5 million people with HBV in the United States.

Common Symptoms

• extreme fatigue, headache, fever

• nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, tenderness in the lower abdomen

Later Symptoms: dark urine, clay-colored stool, yellowing of the skin and whites of the eye (jaundice), and weight loss.

HBV may show no symptoms during its most contagious phases. If symptoms appear, they appear within four weeks.

How HBV Is Spread: In semen, saliva, blood, feces, and urine by:

• intimate and sexual contact, including kissing, vaginal and anal intercourse, oral sex and oral/anal sex.

• use of unclean needles to inject drugs

• passing from a woman to her fetus during pregnancy

Health care workers may be infected when accidentally stuck by a needle containing the infected blood of a patient. Hepatitis Â is highly contagious.

Diagnosis: Blood test.

Treatment: None. In most cases, the infection clears within four to eight weeks of rest. Some people, however, remain contagious for the rest of their lives.

Protection: Condoms offer some protection against HBV during vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse, but the virus can be passed through kissing and other intimate touching. Children and adults who do not have HBV can get permanent protection with a series of HBV vaccine injections.

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