Drug resistance popping up in many countries, but prevalence trends unclear.
At least three people in three different countries have turned up with cases of completely incurable gonorrhea—and it’s unclear what happened to all of them and if they’re spreading the infection to others, officials at the World Health Organization report.
These cases highlight two big concerns about gonorrhea: one is that resistance to last-line drugs is alarmingly popping up around the world and appears to be increasing, and the second is that we have lousy surveillance and data on this.
In two reports in PLOS Medicine, the WHO warned of the dangers of drug-resistant gonorrhea infections, which can cause infertility and increase the risk of contracting other infections in those left untreated. Summarizing the latest surveillance data, WHO researchers found a worldwide incidence of drug-resistant infections and announced that these are on the rise. However, while the data is worrying, it doesn’t actually demonstrate international increases—because there just isn’t enough data to do so.
The reports include spotty and cumulative data from 77 of the world’s 195-or-so countries that provided data at least one year between 2009 and 2014. The WHO’s main data analysis focused on whether certain types of drug resistance occurred at least once in that whole span of time. For instance, key takeaways include: 66 percent of reporting countries saw at least one case of gonorrhea with some level of resistance to cephalosporin antibiotics in that time frame. (Those cephalosporins include oral cefixime and injectable ceftriaxone.) And about 81 percent of reporting countries saw at least one strain with resistance or decreased susceptibility to oral azithromycin.
These are concerning statistics because the most recent recommended treatment for gonorrhea is a combination of azithromycin and the cephalosporin ceftriaxone. And these are last-line antibiotics. Gonorrhea has already proven too resistant to other antibiotics, including penicillin, tetracycline, and ciprofloxacin. Read more....
At least three people in three different countries have turned up with cases of completely incurable gonorrhea—and it’s unclear what happened to all of them and if they’re spreading the infection to others, officials at the World Health Organization report.
These cases highlight two big concerns about gonorrhea: one is that resistance to last-line drugs is alarmingly popping up around the world and appears to be increasing, and the second is that we have lousy surveillance and data on this.
In two reports in PLOS Medicine, the WHO warned of the dangers of drug-resistant gonorrhea infections, which can cause infertility and increase the risk of contracting other infections in those left untreated. Summarizing the latest surveillance data, WHO researchers found a worldwide incidence of drug-resistant infections and announced that these are on the rise. However, while the data is worrying, it doesn’t actually demonstrate international increases—because there just isn’t enough data to do so.
The reports include spotty and cumulative data from 77 of the world’s 195-or-so countries that provided data at least one year between 2009 and 2014. The WHO’s main data analysis focused on whether certain types of drug resistance occurred at least once in that whole span of time. For instance, key takeaways include: 66 percent of reporting countries saw at least one case of gonorrhea with some level of resistance to cephalosporin antibiotics in that time frame. (Those cephalosporins include oral cefixime and injectable ceftriaxone.) And about 81 percent of reporting countries saw at least one strain with resistance or decreased susceptibility to oral azithromycin.
These are concerning statistics because the most recent recommended treatment for gonorrhea is a combination of azithromycin and the cephalosporin ceftriaxone. And these are last-line antibiotics. Gonorrhea has already proven too resistant to other antibiotics, including penicillin, tetracycline, and ciprofloxacin. Read more....