{"doi":"10.1093/cid/ciab071","title":"The Duration of Pharyngeal Gonorrhea: A Natural History Study","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Pharyngeal gonorrhea is relatively common. However, the duration of untreated pharyngeal gonorrhea is unknown. METHODS: From March 2016 to December 2018, we enrolled 140 men who have sex with men in a 48-week cohort study. Participants self-collected pharyngeal specimens and completed a survey weekly. Specimens were tested using a nucleic acid amplification test at the conclusion of the study. We estimated the incidence and duration of infection. We defined incident infections as 2 consecutive positive tests, and clearance as 2 consecutive negative tests; and, after visual inspection of the data, we reclassified up to 2 weeks of missing or negative tests as positive if they occurred between 2 episodes of infections. We used Kaplan-Meier estimates to define duration of infection. Finally, we report on the frequency of single-positive tests and the time between the last negative test and the positive test. RESULTS: Nineteen (13.6%) of 140 participants experienced 21 pharyngeal infections (incidence, 31.7/100 person-years; 95% confidence interval, 20.7-48.6/100 person-years). The estimated median duration of pharyngeal gonorrhea was 16.3 weeks (95% confidence interval, 5.1-19.7 weeks). Twenty-two men had 25 single-positive specimens, a median of 7 days (interquartile range, 7-10 days) after their last negative test. CONCLUSIONS: The median duration of untreated pharyngeal gonorrhea is 16 weeks, more than double previous estimates. This long duration of infection likely contributes to high levels of gonorrhea transmission.","journal":"Clinical Infectious Diseases","year":2021,"id":155232,"datarank":0.6141516843333151,"base_score":4.0943445622221,"endowment":4.0943445622221,"self_citation_contribution":0.6141516843333151,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.6141516843333151,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":59,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8648,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":316703,"name":"Olusegun O. Soge","orcid":"0000-0002-8504-2319","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":490006,"name":"Christine M. Khosropour","orcid":"0000-0002-9743-0829","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":648888,"name":"Micaela Haglund","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":657135,"name":"Winnie Wan Yin Yeung","orcid":"0000-0002-1785-4921","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":316704,"name":"James P. Hughes","orcid":"0000-0001-5034-3157","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311289,"name":"Matthew R. Golden","orcid":"0000-0001-7449-3774","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":444182,"name":"Lindley A. Barbee","orcid":"0000-0002-7189-5492","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":28,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:59.154159Z","pmid":"33513222","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}