Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea Worries Health Officials

Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea Worries Health Officials
Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea

Health officials are very worried about a dangerous new strain of gonorrhea that has begun to spread around the world. This new gonorrhea strain is resistant to cephalosporin antibiotics which are normally prescribed to treat the common sexually-transmitted disease. There are confirmed cases of gonorrhea that does not respond to antibiotic treatment in Japan, the UK, Australia, France, Sweden and Norway. There are no reported cases of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea in the United States as of yet. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are on the lookout for the dangerous gonorrhea strain.
When a person is infected with gonorrhea and the strain of the sexually transmitte disease is resistant to antibiotics, there is no backup plan to treat the infection. While there are a few drugs that might be effective against “the clap,” a slang name for gonorrhea, so far there have not even been any clinical trials of the drugs. Since we don’t know if the drugs would work against gonorrhea and we haven’t even begun any testing, It would be quite some time before a new drug to fight resistant gonorrhea would be available.
Many people who have gonorrhea don’t know they have it because they have no symptoms. This is one of the reasons that officials fear outbreaks of resistant gonorrhea that are will be very difficult to control.