Drug Resistant Gonorrhea On The Rise
A recent report from the Center for Disease Control warns that gonorrhea is becoming increasingly difficult to treat. The report is alarming because gonorrhea is typically one of the the easiest STDs to treat, and is also one of only a few STDs that are actually curable. The treatment for gonorrhea has always been a simple course of antibiotics. The CDC’s report states that the particular family of antibiotics used to treat gonorrhea, cephalosporins, is becoming less and less effective. Public health officials in Japan, Spain, and France have already reported a number of cases of cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea, and the CDC warns that rates are on the rise in the United States too.
This finding is particularly disturbing given that gonorrhea is the 2nd most common STD in the United States, with 300,000-800,000 new cases per year. In addition, cephalosporin has been so effective that drug companies haven’t even bothered developing new drugs to treat gonorrhea. This means there is no back-up treatment method to those who develop cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea. If left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, pelvic pain, and ectopic pregnancies in women, and epididymitis and infertility in men. It can be passed along to fetuses, can also increase the risk of developing HIV, and can even lead to death in rare cases.
This recent development is yet another piece of bad news about STDs. Contraction rates continue to rise, with 20 million new diagnoses each year – half of which are young adults age 15-24 – and 110 million total cases. We truly are at epidemic proportions.
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