According to officials in public health, the first confirmed case of super, multi-drug resistant gonorrhea in the world has been confirmed in the United Kingdom.
For some time, there has been anxiety expressed by health experts about the rise in strains that are drug resistant of the Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI).
Even as strains of gonorrhea have started to elude different antibiotics, doctors have been able in most cases treat the infection using combinations of medications, until now.
The patient in the UK is a heterosexual male who reported just one regular sexual partner who is female and lives in the UK, and one living in Southeast Asia about one month prior to the symptoms beginning, and has been confirmed to have the world’s first case of gonorrhea resistant to both the drugs that are commonly used in its treatment, according to the case report from the department of public health in the UK.
His infection did not respond to azithromycin, which is an antibiotic that is utilised frequently in treating gonorrhea, or to ceftriaxone, which is called by the World Health Organization the last-resort treatment of today. He was treated as well with spectinomycin another antibiotic, showed the reports.
The report is another confirmation of the utmost fear that public health experts have and that is of drug resistant gonorrhea spreading across the globe.
The male patient, who at first seek out medical care earlier in 2018, is now being treated with ertapenem, which is an intravenous treatment.
The powerful antibiotic is used typically, at least in the United States, for grave infections in patients who are hospitalized. The results of the patient’s next tests are not due back until the middle of April
Gonorrhea is a very common STI which affects as many as 78 million people worldwide annually, according to data supplied by WHO.
Gonorrhea complications can develop pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, ectopic pregnancy and a higher risk of HIV and is common as well in the U.S.
A report in September released by the Center for Disease Control estimated that over 470,000 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with the infection in just 2016, which would make the thought of strains being untreatable much more worrisome.
Often times symptoms do not present themselves, but if they do they can manifest in painful urination or a greenish or yellowish discharge from the penis.
