This doesn t sound good. The Centers for Disease Control last week warned doctors to prepare for the arrival of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea from Asia, and avoid prescribing too many antibiotics for fear they may create superbugs.
Gonorrhea has become resistant to all but one class of antibiotics, known as cephalosporins, which are getting less effective at treating it especially among men who have sex with men on the West Coast, the CDC says.
Barbara Johnston, MD, associate medical director at Mount Sinai Comprehensive Health Program in New York, told Everyday Health that people need to know that even a recently-recommended treatment for resistant gonorrhea is already failing among some patients.
"There's the attitude that this disease is curable," Johnston says. "We tell our patients that we've already had to change our treatment twice, and there may come the day where we don't have a treatment for it. I think it's just a matter of time."
ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom addressed this issue last fall in his op-ed in The New York Post entitled "The coming gonorrhea epidemic." He says, This is not to be taken lightly. We are hanging on by a thread, with antibiotics constantly losing ground to resistant bacteria. With almost nothing in the pipeline to ameliorate this problem, we could soon be facing a time when gonorrhea is untreatable a huge mess.
ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan added, The only advice to avoid such a major problem from an individual if not a public health perspective is use protection, each time.