Updated:2007-04-13 01:45:03
CDC Says Gonorrhea Is Drug-Resistant
By DANIEL YEE
AP
ATLANTA (April 13) - The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea is joining the list of "superbugs" resistant to common antibiotics, leading U.S. health officials to recommend wider use of a different class of antibiotics to avert a public health crisis.
"Gonorrhea has now joined the list of other superbugs for which treatment options have become dangerously few," said Dr. Henry Masur, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said Thursday. "To make a bad problem even worse, we're also seeing a decline in the development of new antibiotics to treat these infections."
The CDC estimates that more than 700,000 people in the U.S. acquire gonorrhea each year through sexual contact. It is the second most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, trailing only chlamydia, which the CDC says affects more than 2.1 million people yearly in the U.S.
The highest rates of infection are among sexually active teens, young adults and African-Americans. Because many people do not have obvious symptoms, they can unknowingly spread it to others.
In women, gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease. In men, it can cause epididymitis, a painful condition of the testicles that can lead to infertility if untreated, the CDC said.
In the survey of 26 cities last year, Philadelphia had the highest percentage of drug-resistant cases with almost 27 percent, a dramatic increase from only 1.2 percent in 2004.
San Francisco's drug-resistant cases more than doubled between 2004 and 2006, from 10.3 percent to 22.5 percent. During the same period, Miami's cases spiked from 2.1 percent to 15.3 percent and Atlanta's climbed from 1 percent to 5.7 percent.
Described by Douglas as a "very wily" disease, gonorrhea has worked its way through decades of other treatment regimens, from sulfa drugs used in the 1930s and 1940s, to penicillin, which was used from the 1940s until the mid-1980s.
"We are running out of options to treat this disease," said Douglas, who said there are "no new drugs for gonorrhea in the drug development pipeline."
The CDC estimates that more than 700,000 people in the U.S. acquire gonorrhea each year through sexual contact. It is the second most commonly reported infectious disease in the United States, trailing only chlamydia, which the CDC says affects more than 2.1 million people yearly in the U.S.
"That leaves us with a single class of highly effective antibiotics," said Dr. John Douglas Jr., director of the CDC's division of STD prevention. Other experts called the situation perilous.