[b]Researchers warn that the sexually transmitted disease (STD) gonorrhea is winning the battle against medicine’s arsenal of antibiotic treatments. And now in the UK, doctors are changing the recommended treatment for the disease, because it is now resistant to a common antibiotic.
Researchers in both the US and UK have recently expressed concern about the increasing number of cases of gonorrhea that are resistant to certain drugs used to treat it, noting its “catastrophic” implications for the future of controlling the disease.
In the UK, the oral antibiotic cefixime has been traditionally used to treat gonorrhea, once considered an easily treatable condition and the second most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease in the country. But now the Health Protection Agency in the UK says laboratory tests show that failure of gonorrhea treatment has grown from 10.6 percent in 2005 to 17.4 percent in 2010.[/b]
[b]The US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 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, chronic pelvic pain for women, and, in men, a painful testicular condition known as epididymitis.[/b]