The super gonorrhea strain is here, according to the CDC

Gonorrhea used to be easily curable with antibiotics. Well, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a warning:

Government heath officials are warning that gonorrhea, one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases, is becoming increasingly resistant to the last type of antibiotics left to treat it.

Although no cases of resistant gonorrhea have been reported in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says its own laboratory studies are detecting growing signs of resistance to a class of antibiotic drugs called cephalosporins. In addition, resistant strains already have shown up in other countries. Recently, two cases in which gonorrhea treatment failed were reported in Norway among heterosexual men, and a new resistant strain of the bacteria was identified from a female sex worker in Japan.

It doesn’t take long for sexually transmitted diseases to cross the sea. And the CDC is already seeing resistance in the U.S.

In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the C.D.C. reported last week on a decade-long analysis of 5,400 to 6,500 annual gonorrhea cases from men treated in 30 American cities. From 2000 to 2010, the percentage of gonorrhea cases that showed potential resistance to two cephalosporin drugs rose sharply. Surveillance data from 2010 showed that over all, 1.4 percent of samples showed increasing resistance to the oral drug cefixime, up from 0.2 percent in 2000. Resistance to the injectable drug ceftriaxone rose to 3 percent, up from 1 percent a decade ago.

Practice safe sex at all times, because more than 700,ooo people get gonorrhea every year in the U.S.

In women, untreated gonorrhea can lead to fertility problems, pelvic inflammatory disease or ectopic pregnancy, and pregnant women can pass the disease to their babies. In men, the disease can cause painful scarring of the urethra, urination problems and kidney failure. Long-term complications for both sexes include joint pain, heart valve infection and meningitis.

Just something to think about.

This article appears in Jul 12-18, 2011.