Wrap up it up or keep it in the pants because gonorrhea just might become the new herpes.

The New England Journal of Medicine has released info stressing a concern that antibiotic resistant gonorrhea is on the rise in the western United States and among men who have sex with men.

More than 600,000 people in the United States already have the disease, making it the most second-most common communicable one in the country. Just in case you didn't pay attention in sex-ed class or have been fortunate enough not to catch it, symptoms include burning while urinating, discharge, and pain during intercourse, and usually appear two to five days after contracting the infection.

Ol' Dirty Bastard might have made light of it, but that does not sound fun at all.

Gonorrhea has been resisting antibiotics since the 1940s, but the rate that it is at now is more alarming. Back then they were still developing medicine for it, but these days, the most advanced antibiotics are struggling to fight it too.

“A major component of the threat is that there really is no backup plan if, most likely, when these more resistant organisms become more prevalent,” says Dr. Kenneth Fife, professor of medicine at Indiana University Medical School. “There are very few new drugs that have activity against the gonococcus, and no clinical trials to establish the efficacy of the few drugs that might have promise.”

Making it even more dangerous, many people have gonorrhea and unknowingly spread it because not everybody suffers from the symptoms.

“There is no magic wand here and it’s going to require rigorous work,” says Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “Public health has to be able to reach out and contact sex partners of people with these resistant bugs.”

FYI, the government is cutting public health and research programs left and right.

Be careful folks.