Fire Down Below
This image shows several dozen Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria – the cause of a painful and life-threatening disease called gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, but it can also be transmitted to a baby during childbirth, as the infant passes through the birth canal.
Media For Educational Use Only
DownloadFire Down Below
This image shows several dozen Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria – the cause of a painful and life-threatening disease called gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease, but it can also be transmitted to a baby during childbirth, as the infant passes through the birth canal.
What am I looking at?
This image shows a number of Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria. Each bacterium has two “lobes” (1 and 2) that are connected in the middle.
Biology in the background
Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted infection, especially in young people aged 15 to 24. In fact, the World Health Organization reported over 82 million new cases of gonorrhea worldwide in 2020. The infection can be spread by direct contact with the genitals, mouth, or anus of an infected person, as well if a baby is born to an infected parent. Symptoms of the disease include pain or burning during urination, genital pain, a sore throat, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, abdominal or pelvic pain, eye pain, and sensitivity to light. Gonorrhea can be treated with antibiotics if the infection is caught early.
A Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium averages about 1 micrometer across, or roughly 75 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Technique
This image was created using colored scanning electron microscopy.
TagsNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH