Gonorrhea Now Drug Resistant - Named Urgent Public Health Threat In USA

Gonorrhea now drug-resistant

Gonorrhea has been classified as an urgent public-health threat in the United States after it has grown drug-resistant.At least 2 million people in the United States develop serious bacterial infections that are resistant to one or more types of antibiotics each year, and at least 23,000 die from the infections, according to a new report.

They also include diaorrhea-causing superbug C difficile and a fast-growing killer 'nightmare' bacteria dubbed a known as CRE.

It comes as experts warn we are fast approaching a 'post anti-biotic era' where the 'cushion of drugs' to protect us against diseases is gone. 

Overprescription of antibiotics has been held to blame for the increase in drug resistance. 

Experts say it allows pathogens the opportunity to outwit the drugs used to treat them.

And only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, with only a few companies working on drugs to replace them.

Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which released the report, said: 'For organism after organism, we're seeing this steady increase in resistance rates.

'We don't have new drugs about to come out of the pipeline. If and when we get new drugs, unless we do a better job of protecting them, we'll lose those, also.'

Steve Solomon, acting director for the epidemiology and analysis program office at the CDC told Bloomberg that bacterial resistance was identified shortly after antibiotics were first used in the 1940s, but that there had always been new drugs in the pipeline. 

But he said: 'The cushion of new antibiotics is gone. 

'We’re right at the edge of this cliff where we’re approaching the post-antibiotic era.”'

The first of its kind report was conceived to bring together as much information as possible about drug-resistant superbugs and how to slow their spread, with a hope of preserving the remaining drugs that still work, Frieden said.

Drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, causes 246,000 U.S. cases of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea each year.

The disease is increasingly becoming resistant to tetracycline, cefixime, ceftriaxone and azithromycin - formerly the most successful treatments for the disease.

Gonorrhea is especially troublesome because it is easily spread, and infections are easily missed.

In the United States, there are approximately 300,000 reported cases, but because infected people often have no symptoms the CDC estimates the actual number of cases is closer to 820,000.

If left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirths, severe eye infections in babies and infertility in men and women.

'The three organisms that have been chosen as urgent are all increasing at an alarming rate to which therapies are limited,'  said Dr Edward Septimus, an infectious disease expert at HCA Healthcare System in Houston, Texas, and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's Antimicrobial Resistance Workgroup.

Septimus, who was not involved with the CDC report, said the pathogens in the urgent and serious categories - which include Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and drug-resistant tuberculosis - are 'certainly worthy of immediate response. I do believe it's a looming public-health crisis,'  he said.

The United States is not alone in raising the alarm over antibiotic drug resistance.

Last March England's chief medical officer for England said antibiotic resistance poses a 'catastrophic health threat'. 

They also include diaorrhea-causing superbug C difficile (pictured) and a fast-growing killer 'nightmare' bacteria dubbed a known as CRE

That followed a report last year from the World Health Organization that found a 'superbug' strain of gonorrhea had spread to several European countries.

The CDC report ranks the threat of drug-resistant superbugs into three categories - urgent, severe and concerning - based on factors such as their health and economic impacts, the total number of cases, the ease with which they are transmitted and the availability of effective antibiotics.

Among the top three threats deemed 'urgent' is CRE, which Frieden last March called a 'nightmare bacteria' because even the strongest antibiotics are not effective against it.

According to the report, CRE accounts for 9,300 healthcare-associated infections. The two most common types of CRE - carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella spp. and carbapenem-resistant E. coli - account for some 600 deaths each year.

'For CRE, we're seeing increases from 1 state to 38 states in the last decade,' Frieden said.

And according to the report, C. difficile causes 250,000 infections and kills 14,000 people in the United States each year, adding $1 billion annually in excess medical costs. 

Deaths from C. difficile rose 400 percent from 2000 to 2007 due to the emergence of a drug-resistant strain of the bacteria.

Please take precaution and protect yourselves and your loved ones. Use a condom if you must but I think it is better to hold body.  : )