Quick Guide To Common Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Diseas…

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are diseases that are passed from an infected person to a non-infected person through vaginal, anal or oral intercourse. STDs are common, and not all people have symptoms when they are infected. It is not uncommon to diagnose the STD by its complication (which always a lot more expensive to treat than an uncomplicated form of a disease). This is significant because of the suffering a person must go through, plus the high cost to treat STDs.

Most of the bacterial STDs are easily treatable with antibiotics such as penicillin which is often only given as a single dose or as a short course of treatment. If left untreated, have serious consequences. The most common of these are the pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), infertility and miscarriage in women. Men are also at risk of becoming infertile.

Because STDs can be asymptomatic, it is essential to get regular testing if you are sexually active. It’s painless, it’s easy, and Labwork365 will take extra care about confidentiality- no need to show an ID proof when you go to provide the test specimen, and since you are making the payment, there is also no need for the third party to be involved. Instead if insurance is used for making payments, health insurance company is contacted by the laboratory and they get information about the tests before they issue any payments.

Read on, by the end of this article, we will give you some basic info about the most common bacterial STDs.

Chlamydia Trachomatis Infection

Chlamydia is the most common bacterial STD in the USA and is more common in women than men. It is spread by having vaginal, oral or anal sex with someone who is infected. The reason this is the most common STD is that it often has no symptoms, so people are not aware of it. However, if there are symptoms, they usually include painful urination and intercourse, itch and a foul-smelling discharge. The most important complication of untreated chlamydia is PID which can lead to infertility in up 15% of cases.

Neisseria Gonorrhoeae infection

Gonorrhoeae is the second most common bacterial STD in the USA which affects men and women equally. It is spread the same way as chlamydia – through sex. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea does not usually have any symptoms, and people are unaware that they are infected. Symptoms include bleeding between periods, a foul-smelling, brown discharge, and burning pain during urination.  These symptoms usually start after a week of being infected. If left untreated, gonorrhea can cause PID, leading to both infertility and chronic pelvic pain in women.

Treponema Pallidum infection

Treponema Pallidum, more commonly known as syphilis is one of the easiest STD to treat, requiring only three injections of penicillin antibiotics. Syphilis is spread through intercourse. If you are infected with syphilis, there are often sores on the penis or around the vagina. They are painless and can often be missed. If left untreated for a long time, syphilis can spread to the rest of the body, causing rashes on the hands and feet and flu-like symptoms. It can progress to severe complications such as blindness, mental confusion, paralysis, and death.

Readers takeaway

All the STDs mentioned above were incurable before antibiotic era. The only remedy for those unfortunate enough to pick up an infection was lifelong treatment with mercury creams. Instead of the cure, patients would get a mercury poisoning. Now you can understand the infamous saying from the pre-antibiotic era: “A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.”

Luckily, today we can cure all bacterial STDs easily within the few days. If these are easily treatable, why are so many people sick? The simple answer is that most of the patients with STDs have a silent form of the disease. The only way to detect and cure the disease is through periodic STD lab testing. So, if you are sexually active, the best thing you can do for your reproductive health is testing for STDs!