ARS TECHNICA – Health officials have long warned that gonorrhea is becoming more and more resistant to all the antibiotic drugs we have to fight it. Last year, the US reached a grim landmark:
For the first time, two unrelated people in Massachusetts were found to have gonorrhea infections with complete or reduced susceptibility to every drug in our arsenal, including the frontline drug ceftriaxone.
Luckily, they were still able to be cured with high-dose injections of ceftriaxone.
But, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bluntly notes: “Little now stands between us and untreatable gonorrhea.”
“If public health alarm bells could somehow hit a higher pitch, a study published Thursday from researchers in China would certainly accomplish it.” – ARS TECHNICA
The study surveyed gonorrhea bacterial isolates—Neisseria gonorrhoeae—from around the country and found that the prevalence of ceftriaxone-resistant isolates nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021.
Ceftriaxone-resistant strains made up roughly 8 percent of the nearly 3,000 bacterial isolates collected from gonorrhea infections in 2022. That’s up from just under 3 percent in 2017. The study appears in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
While those single-digit percentages may seem low, compared to other countries they’re extremely high. In the US, for instance, the prevalence of ceftriaxone-resistant strains never went above 0.2 percent between 2017 and 2021, according to the CDC.
In Canada, ceftriaxone-resistance was stable at 0.6 percent between 2017 and 2021. The United Kingdom had a prevalence of 0.21 percent in 2022.
Ceftriaxone is currently the first-line treatment for gonorrhea because Neisseria gonorrhoeae has spent the past several decades building up resistance to pretty much everything else.
As the CDC notes, in the 1980s, the drugs of choice for gonorrhea infections were penicillin and tetracycline. But the bacteria developed resistance.
By the 1990s, the CDC was forced to switch to a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, including ciprofloxacin (Cipro) … READ MORE.
Experts forced to admit homosexuality and promiscuity spread gonorrhea, traditional marriage prevents it – Headline Health
- “Sexually active women younger than 25 and men who have sex with men are at increased risk of getting gonorrhea.”
- “Other factors that can increase your risk include:
- Having a new sex partner.
- Having a sex partner who has other partners.
- Having more than one sex partner.
- Having had gonorrhea or another sexually transmitted infection.”
- “Being in a monogamous relationship in which neither partner has sex with anyone else can lower your risk.”
SOURCE: Mayo Clinic
