AURORA | Experts have some bleak news for the more than 100 million people worldwide who contract gonorrhea each year: treatment options are dwindling.
The Centers for Disease Control this month issued a new set of guidelines warning that strands of the sexually-transmitted disease were resisting antibiotics once relied on for treatment. The CDC’s announcement came just two months after the World Health Organization voiced similar concerns.
“Unfortunately, there are more and more drug resistance in gonorrhea and so fewer of our currently available antibiotics are able to reliably eradicate it,” Dr. Stephanie Teal, associate prof of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Colorado School of Medicine.
According to the CDC, is a major cause of pelvic inflammatory disease and can facilitate HIV transmission. Teal, who is also director of family planning at University of Colorado Hospital, said the disease also leads to high rates of infertility in women and can cause ectopic pregnancy.
The CDC said more than 300,000 people in the United States contracted the disease in 2011, while the WHO said more than 106 million worldwide contract it annually.
At the WHO, Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the group’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a statement warning about drug-resistant gonorrhoea that health providers have seen a double whammy of problems: A high number of infected patients, combined with fewer treatment options.
“Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge, due to the high incidence of infections accompanied by dwindling treatment options,” Lusti-Narasimhan said. “The available data only shows the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate surveillance we won’t know the extent of resistance, and without research into new antimicrobial agents, there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.”
WHO called for doctors to more vigilant vigilance on the correct use of antibiotics and said more research into alternative treatment regimens was necessary. The group also called for increased monitoring and reporting of resistant strains as well as better prevention, diagnosis and control of infections.
The CDC said some treatments that were once effective are now largely useless, so much so that some forms of treatment should be scrapped.
Teal said the appearance of drug-resistant gonorrhoea is particularly concerning because, after decades of effective treatment, some people don’t take the infection as seriously as they do others that have historically been difficult to treat.
“Medical care is at a state in the 21st century where we can really treat a lot of things so patients really take it for granted that if they contract an infection of any type, they just go to the doctor and we’ll be able to treat it,” she said.
Doctors want patients to be confident that their doctors can treat an illness, she said, but they also want patients to know that some illnesses are particularly challenging.
Teal said her advice for patients in light of the recent gonorrhoea news is the same as it is for other STDs, choose partners carefully and use condoms.