[Question #9896] Oral Sex Burning Stinging 11 days after exposure

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28 months ago
11 days after an unprotected oral sex exposure. Burning, stinging sensation while urinating. Difficulty in the beginning and little pain during the rest of urination. Never had any discharge.  28 days have now past since since exposure. No outbreak on genitals so I don’t think herpes is an issue. Get tested for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea, negative for both. Bacteria present in urine. Urine sample >30 WBC esterase. Treated for urethritis, take 2 Z pack and 7 days of doxycycline. Pain continues. Doctors think possible UTI. Take cipro for 10 days. Day 5 on cipro wake up with erection and stinging pain in urethra. Erection won’t go away. Ejaculate and the pain subsides. Semen leaks from penis for the next 8 hours until I go to bed. Take another urine test after finishing course of Cipro. Trace leukocytes in urine. Doctor says I’m good to go. My question is should I be worried about an std or does this seem to be a prostate infection or possibly was it a UTI?  
Thank you for your time. 
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
28 months ago
Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your question.

There's good news here:  Most important from this forum's perspective, you can be confident you have no STD and never did. Several reasons to be confident:  Oral sex is low risk -- not entirely free of STD risk, but a low risk for all and zero for some (much safer overall than unprotected vaginal or anal sex). Second, 11 days is too long for symptom onset for any STD that might infect the urethra. Third, absence of discharge is evidence against STD. (As it happens, my colleague Dr. Hook was the senior investigator on one of the main research studies that established that dysuria i.e. painful or burning urination, without discharge, is not an STD symptom, or a rare one at most.) Next, gonorrhea is by far the most likely STD that conceivably could do this; chlamydia is not a risk from oral sex; and the negative test results are confirmatory. Next, markedly elevated urine WBC/esterase is typical for a non-STD UTI and/pr prostatitis (more about which below). Next, absence of response to doxycycline and azithromycin, plus final response to ciprofloxacin, are against STD but fit perfectly with many UTIs and prostatitis. Finally, your doctor's reassurance is worth a lot:  you should trust her or his conclusion.

Either an uncomplicated UTI or bacterial prostatitis are good bets here. Your doctor is in a better position than I am to judge which is most likely. The two may be closely related:  prostatitis is often the source of bacteria spreading into the rest of the urinary tract, resulting in UTI symptoms. You don't say your age, which may be pertinent:  UTI is increasingly common in males after age 40-45, but rare before that. If your doctor is not confident about prostatitis and you are on the younger side, most experts would recommend further evaluation to rule other predisposing conditions -- things like urinary tract stone, bladder diverticulum, impaired urine flow due to various conditions, and so on. If your doctor is a urologist, undoubtedly these things are on his/her mind. If not,  you might discuss further urological evaluation with your doctor.

A final consideration, also to discuss with your doctor(s), is that infectious prostatitis often requires prolonged antibiotic treatment (up to 6 weeks) to assure eradication and low potential for recurrence.

In any case, you can be entirely confident this isn't an STD problem.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD
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28 months ago
I am 40 so a UTI would be a possibility. I was thinking it’s a prostate issue/infection. Thank for your thorough and quick response. I greatly appreciate your time. 
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
28 months ago
At age 40, probably the most likely scenario is both prostatitis and UTI, i.e. prostate infection that resulted in the UTI. This is outside the STD realm, but still I would advise you ask your physician (ideally a urologist?) whether additional urinary tract imaging is recommended. And address duration of antibiotic treatment.

Thanks for the thanks I'm glad to have helped.
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