There are many diseases, the main mode of transmission of which is sexual. One of them is gonorrhea - damage to the genitourinary tract by a specific microorganism - gonococcus.
With such a disease, gonococci in a smear can always be detected. This disease proceeds with a characteristic clinical picture and severe consequences.
The main symptoms of the disease
- pathological purulent discharge from the genitals;
- a feeling of itching and burning in the genital area;
- pain in the lower abdomen and in the lumbar region;
- sometimes the discharge may acquire a bloody character;
- swelling of the walls of the vagina, glans penis.
There is a course of the disease without pronounced clinical symptoms, but this does not exclude the development of complications of the disease.
Gonococci affect almost all the organs of the small pelvis, and with oral contact, the oropharynx.
Possible methods for detecting gonococcus
Every woman should visit a gynecologist at least once every six months. At each such preventive examination, a smear of vaginal microflora is taken for examination. Normally, the flora should be constant, red blood cells should not be present, and the number of leukocytes should not exceed 10. Sometimes, with such a preventive study, gonococci in a smear can be detected - this is an alarming sign. Such a result may indicate an asymptomatic course of the disease, latent carriage, or simply the initial period of the disease, which at the moment has not had time to clinically manifest itself.
When a specialist discovers gonococci in a smear, his next steps should be to confirm the diagnosis with other methods.
How else can gonococcus be detected in the body?
A method for the specific determination of a microorganism is a polymerase chain reaction. The effectiveness of this method is more than 90%, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to perform. During this procedure, the device tries to find the remains or the whole DNA of the microbe.
A PCR test for gonococci can be considered positive, if the device gives at least the slightest confirmation of the presence of the bacterial genetic material in the smear, if neyseria is not found, then the person can be considered healthy.
Analysis for gonococci should be carried out in the morning or in the morning. The patient should know that in order to obtain a more accurate result, you do not need to urinate for several hours before taking the test. During the day, it is best to refrain from sexual intercourse. It is also necessary to stop the use of all local urogenital agents.
To diagnose gonococcus, a scraping of the cells of the mucous membrane of the urethra, cervix, rectum, and posterior pharyngeal wall is taken. It is also possible to study biological fluids: urine, sperm, prostatic secretion, which is removed from the eyes.
Before the material is taken for the study, the doctor collects an anamnesis from the patient, makes a preliminary diagnosis based on the clinical picture and complaints of the patient. And taking all these data into account, it suggests possible places of localization of neiseria, therefore, as a rule, material from 1-2 foci is taken for research.
After the material is collected, it is placed in a special test tube where a liquid was previously placed in which the bacterium does not die.
Thus, we either confirm gonococci in a smear, or refute their presence using PCR diagnostics. It should be noted that many factors can affect the results of the study, so if the doctor doubts the accuracy of the study, then after some time the analysis is best repeated. After all, there are such concepts as false positive and false negative test results.