Super Gonorrhea can spread from overuse of antibiotics for Covid-19 Coronavirus

You want 2021 to be great. But not on some sort of super gonorrhea.

“Super gonorrhea” is trending on Twitter right now, why not? After all, it’s 2020. And what could be better to have a trend at the end of a year that has brought us the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, a shortage of basically everything, constant drama in the White House and a presidential election that just won’t end? Think of this sexually transmitted disease as the cake à la mode, the nightcap, the final cloth of 2020.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, super gonorrhea isn’t great to have. It won’t ask you to say to your partner, “I just got back from the doctor’s office and I have great news for you.” No, telling him or her you have super gonorrhea would be about as positive as saying you have sexy syphilis or chlamydia with candies. Supergonorrhea isn’t a comic book hero either, in case you’re wondering:

If it were in a movie, it would be super gonorrhea Ghost Rider a run for the worst comic ever.

Instead, super gonorrhea occurs when the bacteria that cause gonorrhea Neisseria gonorrhoeae, develops a high degree of resistance to the antibiotics normally used to treat the infection: azithromycin and ceftriaxone. As I already reported in 2017 Forbesthe World Health Organization (WHO) has such strains of it N. gonorrhoeae on the list of the world’s most dangerous superbugs. When creating your bucket list, don’t put anything on this WHO superbug list. “We have no more ways to treat your infection,” says “no one can fly the plane” at the top or “the hull of the cruise ship you are on is made of pickles” on the list of things you don’t want to hear.

Then in 2018 I covered for Forbes a case of a man from the United Kingdom (UK) who had a “super” sexual encounter while traveling through South East Asia. The man developed symptoms a month later and was diagnosed with super gonorrhea. As a result, the man’s steady partner had to be tested in the UK, but luckily she tested negative for the superbug. It is not clear whether this couple stayed together after the super revelation. After all, things like not knowing how to tango or infecting yourself with super gonorrhea can be a deal breaker for some when it comes to dating. If the relationship continued, the woman would have had a hefty card for future arguments like, ‘What don’t you get out of the trash? Remember the time you had sex with someone else and almost gave me super gonorrhea? ”

So why is super gonorrhea trending on Twitter when there are so many other things that can evolve? Well, there are several options:

But it seems the trend came from a WHO spokesman said The sun that the overuse of azithromycin and the lack of services to treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs) during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic could fuel the rise of super gonorrhea. Not the sun as in that fiery ball in the sky that you shouldn’t look at even during a solar eclipse, but The sun as in the UK publication.

Indeed, using azithromycin more often can select for more resistant versions of it N. gonorrhoeae. Remember earlier this year some were offering the use of azithromycin along with hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19? And some political leaders jumped on this cart? This was even before well-designed and conducted clinical studies were conducted to assess the safety and efficacy of such drugs for the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) infections. So this was an example of premature medication. Since then, clinical studies have found insufficient evidence to support such use. In a comment in The Lancet, Catherine E. Oldenburg, PhD, an assistant professor, and Thuy Doan, MD, PhD, an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) concluded, “For patients with Covid-19, the addition of azithromycin the existing standard of care regimens do not appear to improve outcomes ”, after reviewing the results of the COALITION II study evaluating the addition of azithromycin to hydroxychloroquine and the standard of care for the treatment of patients with severe Covid-19 in hospital .

As a result of the scientific evidence that has subsequently emerged, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Covid-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel now recommends “the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin for the treatment of Covid-19” in the hospital. or non-hospitalized patients.

For anyone who may have said, “What’s the harm in continuing to take azithromycin to treat SARS-CoV2 infections,” here’s a super response. Using antibiotics indiscriminately in infectious diseases as if they were Nutella can promote the growth of resistant organisms. Antibiotics such as azithromycin are considered “broad spectrum” because they can kill or inactivate a wide variety of bacteria. It’s like using a bomb instead of a gun. This can be useful if you don’t know what causes an infection or if there is no other option.

However, any time you use a broad-spectrum antibiotic instead of a treatment that is much more targeted and specific, you run the risk of kinder bacteria and weaker versions of a pathogen such as N. gonorrhoeae, leaving stronger, more resistant versions a more open field for flowering. The remaining stronger ones then multiply and become much more predominant. This is the more resistant versions of the bacteria take over and spread.

In the US, the five years from 2013 to 2018 saw a more than seven-fold increase in the rate of N. gonorrhoeae samples less sensitive to azithromycin from 0.6% to 4.6%. The emergence of azithromycin resistance in N. gonorrhoeae led to a Dec. 18 change in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for the treatment of uncomplicated gonorrhea. Instead of a two-drug azithromycin and ceftriaxone approach, the CDC now recommends just one injection of 500 mg of ceftriaxone. By “straightforward”, the CDC means your everyday number one gonorrhea infections from number one your urinary tract, number two your rectum, your genitals, or your throat. If you don’t know how each of these places can be affected N. gonorrhoeae, you may need to take sex again. Of course, more complicated gonorrhea may require antibiotics.

One problem with the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is that other pathogens have not necessarily taken a break. They didn’t spend most of their time on Zoom calls muting each other and using the video filters saying, “Hey, look at me, herpes in a hat.” While the social distance between people has limited the spread of some pathogens like the flu, others may have had a good 2020.

After all, the pandemic not only prompted doctors to try different antibiotics to treat the coronavirus Covid-19, it has also reduced the availability of doctors to properly treat STDs. The pandemic has closed many “non-essential” health services or prevented many patients from seeking appropriate medical care. Therefore, people may be walking around with untreated infections or trying to treat themselves with potentially unsuitable antibiotics.

As I have said repeatedly, the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has exposed many of the problems that already existed in society. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of them. If nothing is done to better address this impending problem, pathogens such as super gonorrhea will be far from disappearing by 2021 and beyond.