Gonorrhea is treated with antibiotics, usually given in the form of a pill or an injection. In recent years, some strains of the gonorrhea bacteria have become resistant to various antibiotics. A culture of the gonorrhea may indicate if it is a resistant strain. Because of the increase in resistant strains, physicians may treat all gonorrhea cases as if they were drug-resistant strains and use nonresistant antibiotics.

Pregnant women with gonorrhea have additional treatment considerations. They cannot take certain antibiotics because the drugs may affect fetal development. For example, tetracycline antibiotics may discolor the developing baby’s teeth. Gonorrhea also makes women more likely to have a miscarriage or a premature birth. In addition to treatment with antibiotics, they may be treated with other drugs to avoid preterm labor.

Most antibiotics can be administered in a single dose or a week’s worth of pills. The patient should refrain from sexual activity for seven days (for either medication) to give the medication time to work. Patients should have a follow-up physician visit after a week to recheck cultures and verify that the gonorrhea has been cured. They should be certain to complete any oral medication or the infection may not be eradicated. Patients treated for gonorrhea can be reinfected with the disease if they have sexual contact with another infected person.

People infected with gonorrhea are frequently infected with chlamydia, another sexually transmitted disease with few symptoms. When gonorrhea is diagnosed, physicians may prescribe a combination of antibiotics in order to treat the patient for chlamydia, as well.

Due to the continued increase in drug-resistant strains of the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation in early 2007 for gonorrhea to now be treated with a single class of newer antibiotics known as cephalosporins. The agency is also calling for increased research efforts into developing more nonresistant antibiotics to combat the growing scarcity of treatment options for the disease.