Bad news about Gonorrhea.
Sex and the Superbug
The new strain of gonorrhea is coming out of Japan, but dirty pussies aren't responsible. Instead, researchers have found a different breeding ground, the back of the throat, which allows the germ to mutate.
Of course, if large numbers people have infected throats, mouth love must be to blame.
There is some good news. It's not fatal.
The article's not all doom and gloom. There's this anecdote about what I'm assuming to be an IRT at the clinic.
Sex and the Superbug
The new strain of gonorrhea is coming out of Japan, but dirty pussies aren't responsible. Instead, researchers have found a different breeding ground, the back of the throat, which allows the germ to mutate.
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Gonorrhea is commonly thought of as a painful genital infection. But the microbe also grows robustly in the pharynx, at the back of the throat. With hairlike structures that extend from the cell surface, it scavenges DNA that has been cast loose by the death or dissolution of other microbes, and incorporates them into its own genome. This turns out to be a highly efficient way of acquiring resistance to antibiotics. Multiplying in the pharynx, the gonococcus regularly encounters infectious microbes; these include other strains of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea and unrelated microbes that have accumulated mutations to withstand antibiotics of the kind taken indiscriminately for sore throats and other ailments. A 2011 study by researchers in Japan contends that the Kyoto strain acquired its resistance to ceftriaxone in the pharynx, from other bacteria of the Neisseria family that live there.
Of course, if large numbers people have infected throats, mouth love must be to blame.
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A driving factor behind the rise in gonorrhea infections, as well as the trend toward total antibiotic resistance, is our complacent attitude toward oral sex. Saliva contains enzymes that destroy gonorrhea, so kissing and cunnilingus don’t spread it. But fellatio, which brings the tip of the urethra near the pharynx, carries a high risk of infecting one partner or the other. According to Dr. Peter Rice, a gonorrhea expert at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, fellatio “is the only predictable way to transmit gonococcal infection to the pharynx.”
There is some good news. It's not fatal.
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Even without antibiotics, most people who contract gonorrhea will recover spontaneously, as their immune systems eliminate the microbe. This can take weeks or months; in the meantime, the infection can damage vital tissues, causing scarring and a painful stricture of the urethra in men and pelvic inflammatory disease in women.
The article's not all doom and gloom. There's this anecdote about what I'm assuming to be an IRT at the clinic.
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Recently, a twenty-four-year-old Indian man had come in after noticing some swelling at the tip of his penis. He had had only two partners in his life: a woman in India and another in the U.S., with whom he had not used a condom. Huang got a urine specimen and drew blood to test for syphilis and H.I.V. “You never know,” she said. The urine test came back positive for gonorrhea.
