Be careful out there


Gonorrhea H041 strain can't be treated with traditional antibiotic treatments, cephalosporins

BY Lindsay Goldwert
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, July 11th 2011, 11:48 AM
A team of researchers has discovered a strain of gonorrhea that may be resistant to antibiotics.
Jamie Grill


A team of researchers has discovered a strain of gonorrhea that may be resistant to antibiotics.


Researchers have discovered a strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to antibiotics.

Researchers warn that the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea is winning the battle against medicine's arsenal of antibiotic treatments.

Researchers in both US and UK recently expressed concern about the increasing number of cases of gonorrhea found in each country that are resistant to certain drugs used to treat it, noting its "catastrophic" implications for the future of controlling the disease.

In 2009, nearly a quarter of strains of gonorrhea tested in the US were resistant to drugs commonly used to treat the disease, including penicillin, tetracycline, fluoroquinolones, or a combination of these, stated health and science news website MyHealthNewsDaily on April 19. Early data from 2010 provides even scarier news: gonorrhea is showing resistance to the only drugs physicians have left to treat it, a class of antibiotics called cephalosporins.

The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who issued the 2009 data last month, notes that if left untreated, gonorrhea could spread to the blood or joints, and could even be life-threatening. People with gonorrhea typically show no symptoms, although it can lead to complications, such as infertility and in women, chronic pelvic pain, and in men, a painful testicular condition known as epididymitis.

International experts, such as the CDC and the World Health Organization, are working on strategies to prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistance, and strongly advocate practicing safe sex and getting screened for sexually transmitted diseases, including gonorrhea, if you are sexually active.

Scientists announced the discovery of the new H041 strain at a meeting of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research in Quebec City, Canada, reports MSNBC. This stubborn strain displays a strong resistance to the commonly administered treatments called cephalosporins.

Cephalosporins, such as cefixime, which is taken orally, and ceftriaxone, which is injected, are used to treat gonorrhea.

H041, first found in a the pharynx of a Japanese sex worker, is four to eight times more resistant to ceftriaxone than any other known strain.

"Why this is so concerning is that there are no other treatment options besides cephalosporins right now," Dr. Kimberly Workowski, an STD infection expert at Emory University, told MSNBC. "For pharyngeal infection, oral drugs do not work and ceftiaxone is the only injectable."

What's more, she explained, if history is any guide, the H041 strain will soon arrive in the U.S.

Even in the U.S., resistance to these drugs is on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The CDC has offered a temporary solution for tough-to-treat strains – combining higher doses of halosporins with other powerful antibiotics, including azithromycin or doxycycline.

There are worries that while this may treat the gonorrhea, there may be toxic side effects.

And there may be other drug-resistant strains to come.

The percentage of gonorrhea cases that are resistant to the two commonly administered treatments is on the rise, according to the CDC report, per MSNBC.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2011/07/11/2011-07-11_gonorrhea_h041_strain_cant_be_treated_with_traditional_antibiotic_treatments_cep.html#ixzz1RohjIoOw

The most obvious point is that men MUST use condoms always and secondly I wonder who will get blamed for introducing this strain into the DR ,,,,the nepalese again !!!!!!

NO, NO, NO, do not blame the nepalese again and please do not blame any tourist. Do not blame anything on the influx and the recycling of females in brothels throughout the world; no chance any of those behaviors can remotely bring anything to DR. NA, NA, NA, blame it on the Haitianos. Can't you see those malnourish Haitianos working for less than five percent of the normal wage walking fifty kilometers from home to the construction sites are to be blame since they cannot afford a ten pesos transportation carefare? Don't blame the nepalese; they are only river (artibonite) dumpers!

Scientists Discover Gonorrhea "Superbug"

Experts fret that the new strain could spark a global health epidemic.

By Stephen Spencer Davis | Posted Monday, Jul. 11, 2011, at 10:53 AM EDT
13
71716471

Some scary news on the STD front.

Scientists have discovered a “superbug” strain of gonorrhea in Japan that is resistant to all antibiotics currently used to fight the sexually transmitted disease, Reuters reports.

Researchers worry that the strain, called H041, could transform the easily treated infection into a global health threat, and say that it has already proven resistant to the only antibiotics that are still effective in treating gonorrhea.

One of the researcher’s who discovered the strain called it 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 the researcher, Magnus Unemo.

If left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women.

Unemo sees the strain’s discovery in Japan as part of a larger pattern. "Japan has historically been the place for the first emergence and subsequent global spread of different types of resistance in gonorrhea," he said.

There were indications that gonorrhea could become a superbug last year, when reports emerged from Hong Kong, China, Australia, and other parts of Asia about the disease’s resistance to drugs.

The STD is one of the most common in the world and there are about 700,000 cases annually in the United States alone.

Unemo is slated to present details of his findings at a conference of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research later Monday.

Atabey, can you send Ricardolito to Japan with a contigent of Haitianos so the Nepalese will not be blamed? My dealing with Japanese business men for the past 20+ years; first thing they look for upon arrival in any country are the brothels. Guess what? I AIN'T surprise!

And repeat

This to me is far more concerning than any cholera problem that can be fixed easily with antibiotics and avoided by simply drinking bottled water .. I have to admit to having much unprotected sex in my lifetime and thank my lucky stars I have been lucky .
No one used to be worried but it was just after the Vietnam war that the rumours started flying around Thailand and Australia in particular ,where the Americans had their R and R that there was a venereal disease that could not be cured with antibiotics and those infected men were being sent to Guam , Before this most people had unprotected sex because the pill had been introduced and all the gals were on the pill . But in UK and Europe unprotected sex was the norm until the AIDS HIV scare came about .

Now I will be stocking well up on DUREX ..i prefer to die to have a painless death

Let me bring you up to date. When I was in the military during nam, we use to refer to that strain as the black syphs or the black clap (syn to black plague). We've heard of guys who were sent to the black colony in Thailand or Phillipines since antibiotics were not able to stop the leak. One of my ex-green beret colleague told me that he was treated in Thailand with a regime of different antibiotics for 30 days. According to him, he was on his last prayer.

Thank you for the first hand account..in those days the antibiotics were not nearly as sophisticated sa they are now and yet even these new wonder drugs can not fix this Gonorrea strain ,,,can you imagine the agony . before antibiotics they had to scrape the inside of the penis to try to remove all the pus and infection ,,and with no modern sedatives ..I wonder if we will have to go back to that .