A new superbug threat has emerged. But unlike other antibiotic-resistant bacteria that tend to spread in hospitals and strike patients with low immunity, this pathogen is a new strain of gonorrhea transmitted through sexual contact.
The strain, called H041, threatens to turn what has been an easily treatable disease into a major public health threat. As Reuters reports, it cannot be killed by any currently recommended treatments for gonorrhea, leaving doctors with no other option than to try medicines so far untested against the disease.
Swedish researcher Magnus Unemo, who discovered the strain with Japanese colleagues in samples from Kyoto, called the emergence of the pathogen both “alarming” and “predictable.”
“Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it,” said Unemo, who is presenting his findings today at a conference of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research in Quebec City, Canada.
“While it is still too early to assess if this new strain has become widespread, the history of newly emergent resistance in the bacterium suggests that it may spread rapidly unless new drugs…are developed.”
According to ABC’s Good Morning America, some scientists worry pharmaceutical companies will ignore the potential threat, neglecting to invest much-needed research dollars into developing a new class of effective antibiotics.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, is currently working with the National Institutes of Health to test new antibiotic combinations for the bacteria.
The new research follows a separate report last week from the CDC indicating that, in the U.S., the percentage of antibiotics-resistant gonorrhea cases is rising. As msnbc.com reports, 1.4 percent of patient samples showed a growing ability to defeat the antibiotic cefixime in 2010, up from .2 percent in 2000. Resistance to ceftiaxone, the other antibiotic used to treat the disease, rose from .1 percent to .3 percent over the same period.
Gonorrhea is a bacterial infection that spreads through direct contact with the penis, vagina, mouth or anus, and also can be transmitted from mother to baby during delivery. If left untreated, it can lead to, among other things, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women, and painful urination, other inflections and possibly kidney failure in men.
It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world, most prevalent in south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., the number of cases is estimated at around 700,000 a year, according to the CDC.
LILLY FOWLER
