UN Says Gonorrhea Is Becoming Untreatable

The United Nations health agency gave out new guidelines and warned the doctors that it refrains from recommending the whole antibiotics, quinolones class, since numerous strains of the disease that are resistant to quinolones have emerged worldwide.

In replacement of the said antibiotics class, the agency recommended the use of cephalosporins. This new protocol shakes guidelines that have been used unchanged since 2003. The World Health Organization estimates that 78 million people are yearly infected with gonorrhea.

What causes the resistance?

Health officials all over the world are afraid that continued use of antibiotics to treat other infections like urinary tract infections may lead to the development of untreatable gonorrhea strain. Japan recorded a super resistant strain in 2011.

As time goes by, the gonorrhea cases have been rising up. The development of penicillin meant that a single dose was enough to treat the disease. “Gonorrhea used to be susceptible to penicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and doxycycline — very commonly used drugs,' said Jonathan Zenilman, who studies infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins.” This is according to gonorrhea information statistics.

The decision by the WHO to start using a different class of antibiotics does not mean they now have limited bacterial creativity. There are some countries in which gonorrhea strains already resist the said class of drugs. In 2012, the CDC had warned that cephalosporins, a drug recommended by the WHO, faced the danger of becoming unusable when treating gonorrhea. The body even recommended that doctors should not use.

What should be used?

After such recommendation, the CDC suggested that dual therapy would be more effective when treating gonorrhea.  According to gonorrhea information, the two recommended antibiotics were azithromycin and ceftriaxone. A study done in July arrived to the conclusion that even these when combined could no longer be useful in treating the bacteria.

Teodora Wi of the WHO's Department of Reproductive Health and Research spoke to Journal Science, saying that new drugs will be available in 5 years’ time. That was in response to the worry of what would be done in case the antibiotics options are exhausted. The United States government invests millions of dollars in the CDC as well as National Institutes of Health to come up with new antibiotics and also fight against the resistance.

The World Health Organization also revised the guidelines for treating syphilis and Chlamydia. None of them so far has a severe resistance to antibiotics. For instance, a single penicillin dose is enough to treat syphilis. The main problem could be worldwide shortage of drugs.

As much as both men and women are affected by the three sexually transmitted diseases, the women suffer the most devastating effects. Syphilis is passable from pregnant woman to the fetus while Chlamydia prevents women from getting pregnant. In the case of gonorrhea, the pelvic inflammatory disease may be responsible for dangerous ectopic pregnancies.

 

Contributor: admin