08-07-2012, 06:23 PM
an old fashioned infection...that's making a comeback.
The Washington Times
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Faced with evidence that anti-gonorrhea drugs are slowly losing their effectiveness, the federal government is poised to announce new treatment guidelines later this week to combat the long-dreaded sexually transmitted disease.
This action will be one of many taken by public health workers to address the alarming scenario of a common, sexually transmitted infection becoming resistant to their very drugs that had halted its spread so effectively over the past 80 years.
Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is “a major global threat,” Dr. Edward W. Hook III told a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in May.
If this resistance grows, it “could take us back more than 60 years, to a time when treatments for gonorrhea were not reliably effective and when there were no alternative therapies,” said Dr. Hook, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Alabama and director of the Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Control Program for the Jefferson County Department of Health.
Already, doctors are using higher doses of antibiotics to treat gonorrhea, and cases of complete treatment failure have been reported in Europe, Asia and Canada, he noted.
Complete treatment failure means just what it sounds — “that you have a chronic, active, ulcerative, infectious disease,” said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
While the CDC is on target to take action on this emerging problem, state and local STD facilities are going to struggle with it, said Mr. Smith. The budgets for these agencies “are as bare bones as you can imagine,” he said.
Moreover, as antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea cases emerge, even more efforts must be made to ensure that people who test positive are treated and then re-tested to see if they were cured.
Also, partners of infected persons must also be contacted, tested and treated — an enormous task for public health agencies tasked with fighting STDs, Mr. Smith said.
In the interim, there is now a pressing need to find an entirely new class of drugs to defeat gonorrhea, as previously used drugs, such as penicillin, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones, are now ineffective and cannot be reintroduced, experts told the CDC webinar.
It takes drug manufacturers at least nine years and often up to 15 years to get to a licensed product, on speculative investments ranging from $4 billion and $12 billion, Carolyn Deal, chief of the STD branch of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told the CDC webinar.
In the United States, officials estimate there are now about 700,000 cases of gonorrhea a year, although only half are reported.
Gonorrhea — which also known as “the clap,” “drip” or “GC” — often goes unreported because the infection can be asymptomatic, especially in women, and especially if it has infected the oral cavity or rectum, STD experts said.
When there are symptoms, these usually include painful urination, discharge and itching.
Left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to scarring of reproductive tissues, which can cause infertility. It also typically causes open sores to appear on skin, which raises the risk for acquiring HIV and other STDs.
Pregnant women infected with gonorrhea are at risk for miscarriage, premature birth and other complications; infected mothers can also transmit the infection to their babies, causing eye problems and other problems.
Prudent steps for the public to avoid gonorrhea are to abstain from sex or stay in a monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner and use condoms consistently and correctly, Dr. Robert Kirkcaldy, a medical epidemiologist at the STD division of the CDC, told the webinar.
If a gonorrhea infection is acquired, he said, the person in treatment should let the health care provider know if the infection is resolved, and notify all recent sex partners, so they can get treated too.
CDC officials said last year that an estimated 700,000 new gonorrhea infections occur each year in the United States, making it the second most commonly reported bacterial STD. After infection rates fell steadily from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, infection rates have essentially held steady since then as more treatment-resistant strains appeared.
The Washington Times
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Faced with evidence that anti-gonorrhea drugs are slowly losing their effectiveness, the federal government is poised to announce new treatment guidelines later this week to combat the long-dreaded sexually transmitted disease.
This action will be one of many taken by public health workers to address the alarming scenario of a common, sexually transmitted infection becoming resistant to their very drugs that had halted its spread so effectively over the past 80 years.
Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is “a major global threat,” Dr. Edward W. Hook III told a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in May.
If this resistance grows, it “could take us back more than 60 years, to a time when treatments for gonorrhea were not reliably effective and when there were no alternative therapies,” said Dr. Hook, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Alabama and director of the Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Control Program for the Jefferson County Department of Health.
Already, doctors are using higher doses of antibiotics to treat gonorrhea, and cases of complete treatment failure have been reported in Europe, Asia and Canada, he noted.
Complete treatment failure means just what it sounds — “that you have a chronic, active, ulcerative, infectious disease,” said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.
While the CDC is on target to take action on this emerging problem, state and local STD facilities are going to struggle with it, said Mr. Smith. The budgets for these agencies “are as bare bones as you can imagine,” he said.
Moreover, as antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea cases emerge, even more efforts must be made to ensure that people who test positive are treated and then re-tested to see if they were cured.
Also, partners of infected persons must also be contacted, tested and treated — an enormous task for public health agencies tasked with fighting STDs, Mr. Smith said.
In the interim, there is now a pressing need to find an entirely new class of drugs to defeat gonorrhea, as previously used drugs, such as penicillin, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones, are now ineffective and cannot be reintroduced, experts told the CDC webinar.
It takes drug manufacturers at least nine years and often up to 15 years to get to a licensed product, on speculative investments ranging from $4 billion and $12 billion, Carolyn Deal, chief of the STD branch of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told the CDC webinar.
In the United States, officials estimate there are now about 700,000 cases of gonorrhea a year, although only half are reported.
Gonorrhea — which also known as “the clap,” “drip” or “GC” — often goes unreported because the infection can be asymptomatic, especially in women, and especially if it has infected the oral cavity or rectum, STD experts said.
When there are symptoms, these usually include painful urination, discharge and itching.
Left untreated, gonorrhea can lead to scarring of reproductive tissues, which can cause infertility. It also typically causes open sores to appear on skin, which raises the risk for acquiring HIV and other STDs.
Pregnant women infected with gonorrhea are at risk for miscarriage, premature birth and other complications; infected mothers can also transmit the infection to their babies, causing eye problems and other problems.
Prudent steps for the public to avoid gonorrhea are to abstain from sex or stay in a monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner and use condoms consistently and correctly, Dr. Robert Kirkcaldy, a medical epidemiologist at the STD division of the CDC, told the webinar.
If a gonorrhea infection is acquired, he said, the person in treatment should let the health care provider know if the infection is resolved, and notify all recent sex partners, so they can get treated too.
CDC officials said last year that an estimated 700,000 new gonorrhea infections occur each year in the United States, making it the second most commonly reported bacterial STD. After infection rates fell steadily from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, infection rates have essentially held steady since then as more treatment-resistant strains appeared.
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