Be warned, keep it in your pants

[Gob]

Concerns that gonorrhea may become "untreatable" due to growing antibiotic-resistance has led Dame Sally Davies, Britain's chief medical officer, to reportedly write to doctors and pharmacies across Britain to sound the alarm.

The sexually transmitted infection (STI) is increasingly caused by strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae that resist antibiotic treatment.

"Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease due to the continuing emergence of antimicrobial resistance," Davies wrote. The Guardian reports that a recent outbreak of a superbug strain of the disease - one that doesn't respond to the antibiotic azithromycin - has put Britain on high alert.

Davies urged doctors to use proper treatment protocols. A recent study found that many doctors in Britain still prescribe ciprofloxacin, which hasn't been recommended for a decade now.


Things aren't much better in the United States: In 2013, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention gave it the centres' highest ranking for antibiotic resistance, classifying gonorrhea as an "urgent threat."

At that time, the CDC reported that around a third of cases were resistant to at least one antibiotic.

Gonorrhoea is the second most common STI in Australia, with the rate of diagnosis rising by 67 per cent between 2008 and 2013.

In the United States, there were just over 350,000 cases in 2014; Britain had about 35,000.

Doctors in the United States are now told to use ciprofloxacin in combination with a second antibiotic. For a while, this strategy seemed to be working: A recent study found that resistance to ciprofloxacin had dropped from 1.4 per cent of gonorrhea cases in 2011 to just .4 percent in 2013. But in 2014, the resistance doubled.

Why does this happen? When researchers look for new antibiotics, they obviously look for ones that are incredibly effective against pathogenic bacteria. But as soon as these antibiotics are released for use by the public, they start to lose their effectiveness.

Bacteria are fast-evolving creatures, and individual bacterium are skilled at sharing genes that allow them to survive particular antibiotics. Bacteria can even copy resistance genes from microbes of different strains and species through a process called horizontal gene transfer.

Historically, humans haven't done much to slow this process. Whenever you take antibiotics you don't need, you're introducing bacteria in your body and your environment to the drug, giving those microbes an opportunity to learn resistance to it.

Whenever you don't finish an entire prescription of antibiotics, you're leaving behind bacteria that showed some resistance to the first few days of treatment, and allowing them to reproduce.
When farmers treat healthy livestock with antibiotics in order to promote growth, they're breeding resistance in our meat and in our soil. Now that we know how dangerous this process is, it may be too late to stop it.

It's possible that scientists will develop new classes of antibiotics that are less likely to fall into this cycle. But for the most part, this is just how bacteria work - so it's our use of antibiotics that really has to evolve.

Antibiotic resistant gonorrhea has an especially creepy ring to it. Sexually transmitted infections are highly stigmatised, so the idea of one you can't get rid of with standard treatment is understandably scary.
But as scary as it is, gonorrhea is hardly the biggest of our worries when it comes to antibiotic resistance. This problem isn't going to go away.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-te ... z3vefu5XH4
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[wesw]

[oldr_n_wsr]

I am glad I am happily married.

[Bicycle Bill]

I am glad I am happily married.

But can your spouse say the same thing?

-"BB"-

[oldr_n_wsr]

I am glad I am happily married.

But can your spouse say the same thing?

-"BB"-

She has.
and I am eternally grateful for that given my "problem".

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'm not worried - for the same reason that oldr isn't. Faithful marriage is the best safeguard against catching what slags (both male and female) have got

[Econoline]

Agreed. (Tomorrow is my wife and my 48th wedding anniversary.)

[wesw]

congratulations!

[oldr_n_wsr]

Agreed. (Tomorrow is my wife and my 48th wedding anniversary.)

We'll only have 32 years in May.

[Gob]

14 years for us, in 12 days time.

[wesw]

aw, that was sweet , gob....

oh, I thought that you meant that it only seemed like 12 days......

holly and I will have been together for 15 yrs in july...., july 4th weekend....

she is a saint.

[Lord Jim]

17 years for us..

And Econo, I think I mentioned this before, but I'm happy to mention it again:

Agreed. (Tomorrow is my wife and my 48th wedding anniversary.)

That makes me just the right age to have been the Ring Bearer at your wedding...

[MajGenl.Meade]

You appear a bit older though

[Scooter]

They are called condoms, they have been around for a long time, and they are surprisingly effective.