U.S. health officials say doctors are running out of options for treating the rapid spread of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
Fluoroquinolones, a class of antibiotics that includes Cipro, have been the most common way to treat the bacterial disease since the early 1990s. Since then, gonorrhea has grown increasingly resistant to those drugs.
The CDC recommended last week that a different class of antibiotics, cephalosporins, be used instead.
Dr. Henry Masur said,
Gonorrhea has now joined the list of other superbugs for which treatment options have become dangerously few. To make a bad problem even worse, we are also seeing a decline in the development of new antibiotics to treat these infections.
The CDC made the new recommendation after discovering that nearly 7 percent of gonorrhea cases among heterosexual men in a survey of 26 U.S cities last year had drug-resistant strains of the disease. In 2001, only about 0.6 percent of gonorrhea cases among heterosexual men were drug-resistant.
Dr. John Douglas said,
That leaves us with a single class of highly effective antibiotics.
It’s the first time cephalosporins have been recommended to treat gonorrhea for the entire U.S. population.
Gonorrhea infects more than 700,000 Americans each year. If untreated, the disease can lead to sterility and potentially life-threatening complications.
Gonorrhoea’s spread is preventable through consistent and proper use of condoms.
Via : Sky News