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Gonorrhea will soon be unstoppable

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Gonorrhea has evolved in the past three decades and now our last known line of defence is under attack

It was once as (relatively) simple as an injection of penicillin or various tetracyclines but gonorrhea has, in the space of three decades, become resistant to most of the antibiotics that have previously been used to combat it.

According to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), the emerging druf-resistant strains will one day take the last remaining first-line treatment option away – cephalosporin. For those suffering burning, swelling of the testicles, vaginal discharge and anal itching, the cephalosporin injection – when combined with an oral dose of either azithromycin or doxycycline - will go the same way as ciprofloxian, which lost its CDC recommendation in 2007 when it was discovered that 13.8 per cent of patient samples were resistant to the drug.

In a study released today, the CDC suggest that if 10 per cent of gonorrhea samples are resistant to treatments, there will be a subsequent seven per cent increase in cases. This number of cephalosporin-resistance cases would increase over time because of the cumulative effects of resistance.

The study's results are alarming, but not altogether surprising. The researchers found that increased resistance leads to an increase in gonorrhea cases. That's because being infected with a resistant strain lengthens the amount of time it takes to treat it, giving the infected party more time to pass it on to others.

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While the CDC has had to change its recommended treatment twice in the last seven years, by increasing its dosage and changing the drug combination, for now the treatment appears to be working. However, if gonorrhea strains were to become cephalosporin-resistant, the outbreak would be much larger than previously. With former treatment ciprofloxacin still ineffective in 15 per cent of cases, although it is no longer widely used to treat gonorrhea, there is no plan B for a first-line treatment should current methods become ineffective.

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