Can I get the same STI more than once?

Lighting can’t strike twice, can it? Yes, yes it can.

“With almost every STI, you can get re-infected,” says Khalil Ghanem, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“There is no immunological protection at all from a past infection.”

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He says “almost every STD” because some - namely herpes - are incurable. (You can’t re-catch something that never went away in the first place.) “There is no STD where you can get it once, recover, and then never get it again,” Ghanem adds.

Also, re-contracting the same STI is not some low-probability, never-gonna-happen-to-me scenario, he says.

If you engage in the type of risky sexual behaviors that expose you to an STD once, there’s a good chance you’ll catch it again if you don’t change your habits.

“On average, about 30 percent of individuals will get re-infected with the same STD within one year of treatment,” Ghanem says.

“For gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, and trichomoniasis, you can get reinfected right after concluding treatment.” Research also shows that, for some of these STIs, roughly 1 in 20 cases is a reinfection.

On average, about 30 percent of individuals will get re-infected with the same STD within one year

Why are re-infection rates so high? In some cases, a person who contracts an STI will take drugs to clear it up, but then have sex with the same person who gave him or her the STI in the first place, a report from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute found.

Since most STIs are asymptomatic, it’s not uncommon for a person not to know he or she even has an STI.