Last Resort

Introduction

Drug-resistant gonorrhea is a growing threat. While the last antibiotics effective against the sexually transmitted bacterial infection lose their strength, a different regimen of antibiotics being tested in the UK may delay the rise of completely untreatable gonorrhea. In 2007, just 1.5 per cent of gonorrhea patients in the UK were found to be resistant to cefixime, one of the last effective gonorrhea drugs.

The count, however, jumped to 17 per cent by 2010. But when treatment guidelines were changed and patients with newly diagnosed gonorrhea were given a high dose of ceftriaxone and azithromycin, the resistance cases dropped to 11 per cent within a year. 

Source

Down To Earth, July 2013