Posted on 06/07/2012 9:30:08 AM PDT by neverdem
Both the WHO and the CDC say it's time to "sound the alarm" on the increase in drug-resistant gonorrhea
First, it was the Centers for Disease Control—now, the World Health Organization is warning that Gonorrhea could join herpes and HIV/AIDS as "uncurable" sexually-transmitted diseases.
"We're sitting on the edge of a worldwide crisis," says Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, of WHO's department of reproductive health and research. "There's a general complacency around sexually transmitted infections in general, and this doesn't have the same political or social pressure as HIV. That's because gonorrhea has been so easily curable so far, but in the future, that won't be the case."
Gonorrhea is estimated to infect more than 100 million people worldwide each year and can cause infertility, ectopic pregnancy, painful urination, and severe eye infections to babies born to women infected with the disease.
[Antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in 37 states]
So far, drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea have shown up in the United States, Norway, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom and other countries.
All of those cases were cured with cephalosporins, an antibiotic that doctors say is the "last line of defense" against gonorrhea before moving on to injectable antibiotics. Last year, there was one published case of a strain of gonorrhea that showed resistance to injectable antibiotics as well. Lusti-Narasimhan says those cases will soon be the norm.
In February, the CDC estimated that about 1.7 percent of gonorrhea samples (taken from men with gonorrhea at STD clinics in 30 U.S. cities) was resistant to cephalosporins, a 17-fold increase since 2006.
"If [gonorrhea] didn't cause so much trouble, it'd be a really fascinating organism to study—it's a superbug, a really smart organism," she says. "It not only develops resistance rapidly, but it retains memory of past resistance, so you can't say 'Let's try out penicillin' because [the bacteria] has a memory for it."
[Hospital Rooms Crawling With Drug-Resistant Germs.]
The bacteria's penchant for building up resistance has put drug companies in a tough place—developing a new antibiotic is expensive and unlikely to be profitable, and within a few years, gonorrhea would likely develop a resistance to any new drugs used on it, she says.
"Drug manufacturers are in a bizarre scenario—why would they spend a ton of money developing a new drug for what was, until now, one of the most easily treatable STI's?" she says. "They know if they do develop a new drug, it's going to rapidly develop resistance."
So far, every case of gonorrhea in the United States has been treatable through some combination of antibiotics, according to the CDC. In an E-mail, CDC spokesperson Nikki Mayes says it's time for the international health community to "sound the alarm" that untreatable gonorrhea is on the way.
"The bottom line is that treatment of gonorrhea with cephalosporins remains effective [in the United States], and no cases of treatment failures have been seen in the U.S," she wrote. "But we do want people to be aware that if new treatments aren't developed, we may see untreatable gonorrhea in the future."
Jason Koebler is a science and technology reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at jkoebler@usnews.com.
Hmmmm...
Well, I’ll guess we’ll just have to tax having pre-marital sex and/or having multiple partners like we do tobacco.
That could also be part of those “wellness plans” that insurance companies have and will be force-majeur as part of obamacare.
“Is there any fool proof way to avoid catching a sexually transmitted disease?”
No. The propaganda tells us that it has nothing to do with actions or behavior.
“The propaganda tells us that it has nothing to do with actions or behavior.”
Exactly, and as an RN, I know they were seeing this antibiotic resistance in the 80’s not long after they discovered AIDS. Political correctness should have nothing to do with medicine.
“And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said ‘The wages of sin is death’”.
Umm, doorknobs or toilet flush handles, maybe?
There is a form of treatment, not widely used in the West, that attacks the pathogens directly, rather than through the antibiotic therapy regimen. Disease organisms, pathogens, are themselves subject to deadly diseases that attack them at the cellular level, invading the central living portion of the cell. This bacteriophage therapy has been developed in Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation, and is highly specific for each microorganism species. Things like MRSA, resistant to the usual antibiotics, are treated successfully by an infusion of this specific culture.
So far as I understand the biological action, these bacteriophages are almost considered a virus, and in the absence of the host cell, they revert to a dormant state.
When they first started reporting about AIDS in the media, they told us in 20 years we will all have a close friend or relative dead of AIDS. Well, here it is 30 years later and this disease still infects a MINISCULE number of americans.
15 years ago(maybe more) the media started telling us about a new “superbug” version of tuberculosis that came out of soviet prisons that was drug resistant and highly virulent. They said there was no cure for it and it would soon become a pandemic. Well, here it is 15 years later and virtually no one in america has this disease.
SARS, west nile virus, hantavirus, swine flu, bird flu, lyme disease, Ebola...all of these were supposed to be the next pandemic. Never happened.
Polio and leprosy were supposedly making a comeback in the third world and would spread to the developed world due to vaccines no longer being produced. Never happened.
“Umm, doorknobs or toilet flush handles, maybe?”
Maybe, but then it’s not an STD—spread by actions or behavior.
Action and consequence.
Incurable not uncurable
Thanks to the grace of God and our surveillance systems. IMHO, multidrug-resistant, mdrtb, and extensively drug-resistant, xdrtb forms of tuberculosis are more prevalent than you appreciate.
well, I did not know it was happening in east asia...but as you can see by this map, it is essentially ZERO in the USA. Looks to be the worst in sub sahara africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tuberculosis-prevalence-WHO-2009.svg
I think, looking at the chart that it must have something to do with being able to speak English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tuberculosis-prevalence-WHO-2009.svg
Excellent. It isn’t funny that two generations of school children will be forced to relearn millenia of human wisdom.
They’ve jailed Natural Law, but the walls and bars won’t hold that monster.
Sometimes I get the feeling the world is purposely designed to be K-selected, in a way we can’t imagine, since we can’t see the alternatives.
Let things get too “r” for too long, and a myriad of things happen, which all seem perfectly designed to unavoidably turn the balance back towards K-selection.
Phages are cool. I believe Neisseria (gonorrhea) is actually one genus which they still don’t have a phage for though, at least as of a few years ago. But I might be mistaken.
I wonder if infected people will begin trying to infect others through door handles in public toilets, putting the seat down and contaminating it, etc.
I remember a few people infecting innocents with AIDs back in the 80’s, with the idea that if everybody had it they would be more likely to get a cure. I think the type of people who are most likely to get these things, also have psychologies which can be exceedingly selfish, and evil.
Buy stock in Purell.
Natural Law - making the case for heterosexual marriage, one disease at a time.
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