Health officials’ worst nightmare has come true; the world’s second most common sexually transmitted disease now has an incurable strain.
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That means that those diagnosed with the infection could carry it for the rest of their lives.
The antibiotic resistant gonorrhea was first detected in North America, a study released by the Journal of the American Medical Association says.
In that study, the association found nine patients with a strain of the sexually transmitted disease immune to the last remaining effective oral antibiotic.
Researchers observed that 6.7 percent of patients with gonorrhea at one Toronto clinic still had the disease after a round of cephalosporins, which is the last antibiotic which doctors are able to use to cure the disease.
Out of 133 patients who returned for a ‘test of cure’ visit, nine remained positive with the disease, which is roughly one in 15 people. This study revealed the first time that cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea had been found in humans in North America.
These aren’t the first cases of incurable gonorrhea, however. In the past, individual cases of this strain of gonorrhea were reported in the UK, Austria, France, Norway and Japan.
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Gail Bolan, the director of the CDC’s sexually transmitted disease prevention program, said that the threat of untreatable gonorrhea is emerging rapidly because of how fast antibiotic resistance is evolving in disease.
WOW! Unprotected sex is nothing to play with. Everyone be safe out there!
SOURCE: Daily Mail
