Super gonorrhea can spread due to overuse of antibiotics for Covid-19 coronavirus

You want 2021 to be super. But not in a super gonorrhea way.

“Super gonorrhea” is trending on Twitter right now because, well, why not? After all, it’s 2020. And what better way than to have a trend at the end of a year that brings us the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, the scarcity of everything, a constant drama in the White House and a few presidential elections that will not end? Consider this sexually transmitted infection to be the trendy cake, the nightcap, the 2020 final elimination.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, super gonorrhea isn’t great. He won’t ask you to tell your partner, “I just got back from the doctor’s office and I have great news for you.” No, telling her she has super gonorrhea would be as positive as saying she has sexy syphilis or candy-covered chlamydia. Super gonorrhea isn’t a comic book hero either, in case you’re wondering:

If it appeared in a movie, it would give super gonorrhea Ghost rider a race for the worst comic book film in history.

In contrast, super gonorrhea occurs when the bacteria that cause gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, develops a high level of antibiotic resistance that are commonly used to treat infection: azithromycin and ceftriaxone. As I reported in 2017 during Forbes, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed these strains of N. gonorrhea on the list of the most dangerous superbugs in the world. When making your deposit list, do not include anything in this WHO supernorm list. “We’ve run out of ways to treat your infection,” it ranks up there with “no one can fly the plane” or “the cruiser hull you’re on is made of pickles” on the list of things you don’t want to hear.

Then in 2018, I covered Forbes a case of a man from the United Kingdom who had had a “super” sexual encounter while traveling in Southeast Asia. The man presented with symptoms a month later and was diagnosed with super gonorrhea. As a result, the man’s usual partner in the UK had to take the test, but luckily he tested negative for the superb. It is unclear if this couple stayed together after the super revelation. After all, things like not knowing tango or getting infected with super gonorrhea can be a deciding factor for some when it comes to going out. If the relationship continued, the woman would have had a card to consider in future arguments such as, “Why don’t you take out the trash? Well, do you remember that time you had sex with someone else and you almost gave me super gonorrhea?” ”

So why does super gonorrhea tend to on Twitter when there are so many other things they can tend to? Well, there are different possibilities:

But it seems the trends emerged according to a WHO spokesman The sun that excessive use of azithromycin and lack of services to treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs) during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic may fuel the rise of super gonorrhea. Not the Sun like in that ball of fire in the sky that you shouldn’t look at even during an eclipse but The sun as in the UK publication.

In fact, using azithromycin more often can be selected for more resistant versions of N. gonorrhoeae. Remember that earlier this year, when some promoted the use of azithromycin along with hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19? And did some political leaders jump on that bandwagon? This was even before well-constructed and executed clinical studies were conducted to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these drugs for the treatment of severe coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) infections of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Therefore, this was an example of premature medication. Since then, clinical studies have not found enough evidence to support this use. In a comment to He Lancet, Catherine E. Oldenburg, PhD, assistant professor, and Thuy Doan, MD, PhD, associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) concluded “for patients with Covid-19, the addition of azithromycin to the existing standard of care regimens does not appear to improve outcomes, “after reviewing the results of the COALITION II trial that evaluated the addition of azithromycin to hydroxychloroquine and the standard of care for treating inpatients with Covid -19 severe.

As a result of subsequent scientific evidence, the Covid-19 Panel of Treatment Guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) now “recommends the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin for the treatment of Covid-19 “in hospitalization or outpatients.

For everyone who has said, “What’s wrong with azithromycin continuing to be used to treat SARS-CoV2 infections”? The use of antibiotics indiscriminately in infectious diseases as if the drugs were Nutella can promote the growth of resistant organisms. Antibiotics like azithromycin are considered “broad spectrum” because they can kill or inactivate a wide range of different bacteria. It’s like using a bomb instead of a rifle. This can be useful when you don’t know what causes an infection or when there is no other option.

However, whenever you use a broad-spectrum antibiotic instead of a much more specific and specific treatment, you risk eliminating more friendly bacteria and weaker versions of a pathogen such as N. gonorrhoeae, leaving stronger and stronger versions a more open field to flourish. The stronger ones multiply and become much more predominant. This is how more resistant versions of bacteria take over and spread.

In the United States, the five years from 2013 to 2018 experienced a jump of more than seven times in the percentage of N. gonorrhoeae samples less susceptible to azithromycin from 0.6% to 4.6%. Increased resistance to azithromycin a N. gonorrhoeae has led to a change on Dec. 18 in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for the treatment of uncomplicated gonorrhea. Instead of a two-drug approach to azithromycin and ceftriaxone, the CDC now recommends only a 500 mg ceftriaxone injection. By “simple,” the CDC means your first-generation urinary tract infections number one in the urinary tract, number two in the rectum, genital areas, or throat. If you do not know how each of these sites may be affected N. gonorrhoeae, you may need to have sex again. Of course, more complicated gonorrhea may require antibiotics.

One problem with the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is that other pathogens have not necessarily stopped. They haven’t spent most of their time on Zoom calls silencing themselves and using video filters as they say, “Hey, look at me, herpes with a hat”. Although social distancing of humans may have limited the spread of some pathogens such as influenza, it is possible that others have had a good 2020.

After all, the pandemic has not only prompted doctors to try different antibiotics to treat Covid-19 coronavirus, but has also reduced the availability of doctors to properly treat STIs. The pandemic has shut down many “non-essential” health services or deterred many patients from seeking proper medical care. Therefore, people may run into untreated infections or try to self-treat with potentially inappropriate antibiotics.

As I have said repeatedly, the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has been exposing many of the problems that already existed in society. One of the antibiotic resistant bacteria is one of them. If nothing is done to better address this approaching problem, pathogens like super gonorrhea will be far from over in 2021 and beyond.