Over the weekend, a particularly awful few words began trending on social media: super gonorrhea. That’s because the World Health Organization recently warned that the pandemic is driving the rise of antibiotics.resistant bacteria, including those that cause gonorrhea. Unfortunately, the situation is alone probably getting worse.
Antibiotic resistance has been a slow-growing crisis for decades, butThe effects aren’t finally getting hard to ignore. Currently, so-called superbugs are believed to kill about 35,000 Americans annually, as well as 700,000 people worldwide.
One of the most disturbing superbug threats today is Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the namesake bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is usually not fatal and often has no symptoms, bIf left untreated, it can lead to complications such as arthritis, joint pain, and rashes, as well as infertility and chronic pelvic pain. The bacteria can also be passed from a mother to her baby during delivery, causing an infection that can be fatal or cause serious problems such as blindness. Remarkable symptoms include a green or yellow discharge from the genitals and pain while urinating.
These bacteria are scary because they are to become impenetrable to the firstline antibiotics used to treat them. In 2018 British doctors reported to find a man with the first known case of gonorrhea who was highly resistant to the combination therapy used as standard treatment in most countries: the antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Although the man’s gonorrhea was treatable with a different antibiotic, the case confirmed experts’ worst fears. Other cases of super gonorrhea, as well as others very resistant sexually transmitted infections, have since been documented.
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During this year there were experts from the World Health Organization and elsewhere sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistance is getting worse as a result of the pandemic. First, doctors have routinely prescribed antibiotics to hospital patients with covid-19, a disease caused by a virus (antibiotics do not usually work against viruses). Apparently this is done because hospital patients can develop secondary infections caused by bacteria. Early research had also suggested that the antibiotic azithromycin might have an additional antiviral effect, possibly in combination with other drugs such as hydroxychloroquine.
However, there have been studies since then found it that azithromycin, taken alone or with hydroxychloroquine, has had none lifesaving impact on covid-19 patients. Other research has found it that doctors usually prescribe antibiotics to patients without any evidence that they have bacterial infections.
Which brings us to last week, when the UK outlet The Sun reported on the WHO’s warning about gonorrhea. In addition to the issues mentioned above, WHO also noted that the pandemic is likely to put people off STD testing and medical care, increasing the risk that people will never find out about their gonorrhea or even try to improperly medicate themselves.. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics, especially azithromycin, only adds more dynamite to the powder keg that is super gonorrhea.
“Such a situation could fuel the development of gonorrhea resistance,” said a WHO spokesman told The sun.
What’s worse is that the incidence of gonorrhea and other STIs has been on the rise in many places lately. For example, the US had one record number of STIs reported in 2018, with cases of gonorrhea rising for the fifth year in a row. It is possible (even probably) that the pandemic this year dampened the sexual activity of many people. But antibiotic-resistant bacteria have not disappeared, and cases of super gonorrhea and other highly resistant infections will no doubt continue to increase in the coming years.
There is still hope that there are enough newer antibiotics as well other therapies can be developed over time avoid the worst-case scenario, where common bacterial infections become just as dangerous as they were a century ago. Scientists are also working on vaccines for diseases such as gonorrhea. But there is none a clear solution on the horizon, and the clock is running up. A report commissioned by the UK government in 2014 estimated that if nothing was done, annual worldwide deaths from antibioticsresistant infections would obscure cancer deaths by 2050, with about 10 million deaths per year. By then, super gonorrhea will be the least of our concerns.