Gonorrhoea is getting nastier

Firstly, the strains of gonorrhoea most resistant to treatment haven’t yet arrived on these shores; in the UK the infection is still curable here with antibiotics. But for how much longer?

The bacteria causes the same symptoms as before (the most noticeable is discharge from the penis). But a large amount of gonorrhoea passed on between British gay and bisexual men now has a growing ability to survive the antibiotics used to treat it.

Gay and bisexual men are among several people in the UK who recently failed to be cured of their infection, needing to be treated a second time with a bigger dose of antibiotic (which did work). Clinics are giving a much larger dose of antibiotic, now injected into the buttock, together with a second antibiotic in pill form. And they now call you back to be sure treatment has worked.

As the bug continues to grow less vulnerable to the drugs we have, ever larger doses will be needed. Eventually, sometime in the next five years some experts say, the point will come where the drugs have effectively lost their power to cure the infection. No new ones are in the pipeline.

For those of us with HIV, treatment for gonorrhoea is no different than for HIV negative people but having it pushes up our viral load until it’s treated. During that time this makes it more likely we could infect others if we have unprotected sex. An HIV negative partner with gonorrhoea is also more at risk of getting HIV from us.

So what can we do? Condoms help stop the spread of gonorrhoea, although few men use them for oral sex, a common way it is passed on. More frequent sexual health check-ups make sense, especially as gonorrhoea in the throat or bum doesn’t usually cause symptoms.

Terrence Higgins Trust now recommends a check-up at least every 6 months (more often if you have a lot of partners). The more men you have sex with, the more likely you are to get infections like gonorrhoea, so reducing partner numbers is worth considering.

Some of us might laugh off a dose of gonorrhoea as an occupational hazard of a free-wheeling sex life. But before long fear of an untreatable infection could put condom use, cutting down on sexual partners, and avoiding saunas and sex clubs back on the agenda in a way not seen since HIV first reared its head in the Eighties.

In October THT launches a campaign for gay men in the London gay press and on sites such as Gaydar alerting them to how gonorrhoea is changing and the need for regular check-ups.