The weekend started with a particularly awful couple of words trend on social media: super gonorrhea. This is because the World Health Organization recently warned that the pandemic is helping to fuel the rise in antibiotics.resistant bacteria, including the bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Unfortunately, the situation is just probably to get worse.
Antibiotic resistance has been a slow crisis for decades, buThe effects are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Currently, so-called superbugs are believed to kill about 35,000 Americans annually, as well as 700,000 people globally.
One of the most worrying threats of pride today is Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the homonymous bacterium that causes gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is usually fatal and often asymptomatic, bIf left untreated, it can cause complications such as arthritis, joint pain and rashes, as well as infertility and chronic pelvic pain. Bacteria can also be transmitted from mother to baby during childbirth, causing an infection that can be fatal or cause serious problems such as blindness. Remarkable Symptoms include a green or yellow discharge from the genitals and pain while urinating.
These bacteria are scary because they are become waterproof at firstline antibiotics that are used to treat them. In 2018, Doctors in the UK reported to find a man with the first known case of gonorrhea who was highly resistant to the combination therapy used in most countries as standard treatment: the antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Although the man’s gonorrhea could be treated with another antibiotic, the case confirmed the worst fears of experts. Other cases of super gonorrhea, as well as other highly resistant ones sexually transmitted infections, have been documented ever since.
G / O Media may receive a commission
Experts with the World Health Organization and other places have been trained throughout this year sounding the antibiotic resistance alarm worsens due to the pandemic. On the one hand, doctors have routinely prescribed antibiotics to hospitalized patients with covid-19, a disease caused by a virus (antibiotics generally do not work against viruses). Apparently, this is done because hospitalized patients can develop secondary infections caused by bacteria. Early research had also suggested that the antibiotic azithromycin could have an added antiviral effect, possibly in combination with other drugs such as hydroxychloroquine.
Since then, however, the studies have Found that azithromycin, taken alone or with hydroxychloroquine, has had none rescue impact in covid-19 patients. There is other research Found that doctors usually prescribe antibiotics to patients with no evidence that they have bacterial infections.
This brings us to last week, when The Sun, from the UK, reported on the WHO warning about gonorrhea. In addition to the above issues, the WHO also noted that the pandemic is likely to cause people to delay STI testing and medical care, increasing the risk that people will never find out about their gonorrhea or even and all, try to self-medicate incorrectly. He misuse and overuse of antibiotics, particularly azithromycin, only adds more dynamite to the barrel of powder that overcomes gonorrhea.
“This situation may fuel the emergence of gonorrhea resistance,” a WHO spokesman said he said The sun.
What’s worse is that rates of gonorrhea and other STIs have recently risen in many places. The US, for example, had one registration number of STIs reported in 2018, with cases of gonorrhea escalation for the fifth consecutive year. Is possible (even likely) that the pandemic has dampened the sexual activity of many people this year. But antibiotics-resistant bacteria have not disappeared, and cases of super gonorrhea and other highly resistant infections will no doubt continue to increase in the coming years.
There is still hope that there will be enough new antibiotics and other therapies can be developed in time avoid the worst-case scenario, where common bacterial infections become as dangerous as they were a century ago. Scientists are also working on it vaccines for diseases such as gonorrhea. But no a clear solution on the horizon, and the clock runs out. In 2014, a report commissioned by the UK government dear that, if nothing was done, annual deaths worldwide from antibioticsresistant infections would overshadow cancer deaths by 2050, with about 10 million deaths a year. By then, super gonorrhea will be the least of our worries.