Why worry about gonorrhea?
If you are HIV+ and have genital inflammation due to gonorrhea, the inflamed tissues contain highly concentrated amounts of the virus. If the gonorrheal infection is in your penis, you can shed 8-10 times more HIV in your semen. If you are HIV- but have gonorrhea, the disease-fighting cells of your immune system are especially susceptible to HIV if you have unprotected sex with an HIV-infected partner. Rectal gonorrhea increases the risk of contracting HIV by ten to twenty times. In about 1% of people with untreated gonorrhea, the infection can spread beyond the genital area to the bloodstream, skin, heart or joints. This is called Disseminated Gonococcal Infection (DGI). Symptoms include fever, multiple skin lesions, arthritis, infection of the inner lining of the heart, and meningitis. DGI can be treated with antibiotics. PID (pelvic inflammatory disease), a serious pelvic infection in women, is a more common result of untreated gonorrhea. In PID, the bacteria move from the vagina up
