Salon.com > gonorrhea http://www.salon.com Fri, 24 May 2013 23:33:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Drug-resistant gonorrhea has come to North America http://www.salon.com/2013/01/10/drug_resistant_gonorrhea_has_come_to_north_america/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/10/drug_resistant_gonorrhea_has_come_to_north_america/#comments Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:32:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13167254 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 700,000 Americans get gonorrhea every year. And while that might sound like cause for concern, the common STI is relatively easy to treat with a course of antibiotics.

That's why a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has public health officials worried. A class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins appears to be weakening against gonorrhea infections worldwide and, according to the report, the drug-resistant strain has now reached North America.

Head researcher Vanessa Allen, of Public Health Ontario, examined people who were treated for gonorrhea with cefixime (a cephalosporin) at a clinic in Toronto. Of the 133 patients who received treatment, 6.77 percent failed to respond to medication -- meaning one in 15 patients had contracted the drug-resistant super strain. And a recent piece in the New Yorker reports that some public-health officials believe the superbug will be widespread in as little as five years.

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