Urethritis, at its simplest, is an inflammation of the urethra. Such inflammation is almost always caused by an infection brought on by a sexually transmitted disease (STD). It can also be a symptom from a urinary tract infection, reactive arthritis, or even pneumonia. Urethritis can also occur in 2 to 20 percent of patients practicing intermittent catheterization and following instrumentation or foreign body insertion. Urethritis is 10 times more likely to occur with latex catheters than with silicone catheters.

Urethritis is normally categorized as either gonococcal urethritis or non-gonococcal urethritis.

In many cases, you may be infected, your urethra be inflamed, but you will be asymptomaticapproximately 25% of those with non-gonococcal urethritis. Where symptoms do present, they include:

• A urethral discharge unrelated to sexual activity which may be yellow, green, brown, or tinged with blood;
• Painful urination. It will be at its worse during your first pee of the morning, and worse still if you have consumed alcohol;
• Itching
• A feeling of heaviness or pain in the testicles

Symptoms, when they occur, generally begin 4 days to 2 weeks after contact with an infected partner.

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, or think you may have been exposed to an STD, see your doctor. She will likely give you a physical examination.  A regular urine sample is not a useful test in this case, except to help exclude cystitis or pyelonephritis. But your doctor will perform an analysis on the urethral discharge or take a urethral smear.

If you have urethritis, your doctor will treat the root condition. Usually, that is an STD, which will she will combat with a regimen of antibiotics. 

If symptoms persist following treatment, the disease is most likely nongonococcal urethritis. Prior to improved culture methods and increased awareness of the causes of NGU, symptom recurrences were thought to be psychological in nature. This is usually not the case, and most cases of recurrent non-gonococcal urethritis are related to persistent chlamydial, ureaplasmal, or mycoplasmal infection. These patients benefit from prolonged 1 to 4 weeks of therapy with erythromycin.