Gonorrhea’s growing resistance to antibiotics could make the sexually transmitted disease nearly untreatable in the near future, a top UK health official advised doctors in a recent letter.
According to The Independent and the New York Daily News, a new strain of the disease dubbed “super gonorrhea” that is resistant to ceftriaxone and azithromycin—the antibiotics regularly used to treat patients—has started to surface over the past few months.
Reports indicate that the outbreaks started in Leeds before spreading to other regions of England, and all cases reported to date have been transmitted through heterosexual intercourse. Experts warn that due to this strain’s antibiotic resistance, it is currently virtually untreatable.
In light of the spread of “super gonorrhea”, chief British medical officer Dame Sally Davies sent a letter to general practioners and pharmacists to verify that they are providing patients with both ceftriaxone and azithromycin, not just one or the other.
‘Extremely important’ that both drugs are prescribed, Davies said
The new strain is resistant to the azithromycin component of the treatment, which is what makes it so difficult to treat, The Independent explained. Unless both drugs are administered together, gonorrhea can develop a resistance to the medicine being taken by the patient, which is how the disease managed to become resistant to azithromycin in the first place.
“Gonorrhea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease due to the continuing emergence of antimicrobial resistance,” Davies wrote, according to the Guardian. “Gonorrhea has rapidly acquired resistance to new antibiotics, leaving few alternatives to the current recommendations. It is therefore extremely important that suboptimal treatment does not occur.”
In September, British Association for Sexual Health and HIV reported that at least 16 cases of the so-called “super-gonorrhea” have been detected by Public Health England since March, and earlier this year, UK media reports found that seven online pharmacies were only selling half of the two-antibiotic treatments (the azithromycin portion) to their customers.
“Investigations are ongoing into a number of cases of antimicrobial resistant gonorrhea, these are seen from time to time around the country and those affected have been effectively treated with alternative antibiotics,” Dr Andrew Lee, PHE’s consultant in communicable disease control, told the Guardian. “We know that the bacterium that cause gonorrhea can mutate and develop new resistance, so we cannot afford to be complacent.”
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