The patients did not come in for a sexually transmitted infection. They came in because their knee hurt.
That is the finding buried in new CDC surveillance data from Alaska, and it is the reason the state's increase in a rare gonorrhea complication is worth attention well outside Alaska. Of 35 people identified with disseminated gonococcal infection during 2023 and 2024, 28 of them, or 80 percent, had no mucosal symptoms. No burning with urination. No discharge. Nothing that would prompt anyone, patient or clinician, to think about gonorrhea.
