Gonorrhea Resistant to All But One Antibiotic: CDC
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Gonorrhea Resistant to All But One Antibiotic: CDC
| Mon, 08-13-2012 - 2:20pm |
Could Gonorrhea become untreatable? According to this Health Day News Report, ""We are very concerned about the possibility of the potential for untreatable gonorrhea," said Dr. Robert Kirkcaldy, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC's Division of STD Prevention. "Facing this threat of drug resistance, the CDC is taking the critical step to preserve the last remaining drug that we know to be effective. We're hoping that the actions taken now will prevent that from becoming a reality." more
With incidents of Gonorrhea at all time lows, should we be concerned about this?
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While rates may be at a historical low, the report did say it is still the second most commonly recorded infection with more than 700,000 new U.S. cases annually.
"If left untreated, gonorrhea can result in severe reproductive health consequences including chronic pelvic pain, potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy and infertility," Kirkcaldy said. "We also know that having this infection can increase risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV."
That alone makes it necessary to do whatever they can to keep it from becoming untreatable. Scary thought, indeed.
Yes, we should because...
It is low because we have effective treatments. And if the bacterium becomes resistant, it will cease being low... and the time lag between finding a new effective treatment and an epidemic is entirely possible.
And antibiotic resistance could well emerge if the one remaining effective treatment is also being used for other diseases! After all, resistance is directly related to overuse or misuse of antibiotics or antivirals...
I suspect, right now, there is no money in research to find more effective antibiotics because there is such a small need but one never knows. Look how supposedly eliminated diseases like whooping cough have re-emerged...
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