The World Health Organization (WHO) recently warned of a major public health crisis. A gonorrhea superbug is apparently resistant to antibiotics, said the Daily Beast.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) followed the WHO warning saying virtually untreatable forms of drug-resistant gonorrhea were spreading around the world, reported Reuters.
Gonorrhea is one of the most common sexually-transmitted diseases (STD). It’s spread through oral, vaginal and anal sex. About 106 million people worldwide become infected every year.
This strain of gonorrhea is particularly dangerous, since it doesn’t respond to cephalosporin antibiotics, the last antibiotic left that can treat gonorrhea, wrote the Daily Beast.
CNN.com reported Australia, France, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom are among the countries reporting cases of gonorrhea that don’t respond to cephalosporin antibiotics.
Marc Sprenger, ECDC's director, said the increase in cases of superbug strains meant there was a risk gonorrhea may become an untreatable disease in the near future wrote Reuters.
"Once this organism develops full resistance to this last antibiotic we have, we have nothing else to offer to these patients," said Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, scientist at the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO told CNN.com.
Without treatment, gonorrhea can cause infertility, miscarriages, and eye infections and blindness in babies born with the STD.
WHO doesn’t know the extent of the spread of drug-resistant gonorrhea yet, said CNN.com.
The infections don't seem to be as resistant in the United States as in some of the other countries, but there is increased susceptibility, Lusti-Narasimhan said. More worldwide surveillance is needed to fully assess how widespread these resistant infections are.
"If the resistance is there, what we think is that we’re sitting at a tip of an iceberg," Lusti-Narasimhan said. "For places in many other parts of the world where there are much less both human and financial resources, it’s very difficult to know the extent of the data," added CNN.com.
Bacteria may become resistant to antibiotics as a result of overuse or improper use of antimicrobial agents, as well as poor-quality versions of these drugs, reported CNN.com.
Reuters added that experts say the best way to reduce the risk of even greater resistance developing -- beyond the urgent need to develop new drugs -- is to rapidly and accurately diagnose the disease and then treat it with combinations of two or more types of antibiotics at the same time.
Although the disease is easily treated with antibiotics, Reuters said infections can remain undiagnosed because many patients -- 70 percent of women and 50 percent of men -- have no symptoms and are unaware they are carrying and passing on the infection.
Sources:
Kelland, Kate. "Superbug gonorrhoea spreading across Europe." Reuters.com. Thomson Reuters, n.d. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-europe-health-gonorrhoea-idINBRE85A10Q20120611
"Metro - Gonorrhea is back! STD superbug could be major health crisis." Metro- Choose your city. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://www.metro.us/boston/national/article/1145013--gonorrhea-is-back-std-superbug-could-be-major-health-crisis.
"WHO: STD Superbug on the Rise - The Daily Beast." The Daily Beast. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2012/06/07/who-std-superbug-on-the-rise.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet.
"WHO: Sexually-transmitted superbug could be major crisis – - CNN.com Blogs." - CNN.com Blogs. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2012.
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/06/who-sexually-transmitted-superbug-could-be-major-crisis/?hpt=hp_bn12.
Reviewed June 15, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith