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Friday, May 30, 2003Unlike viral sexually transmitted infections such as HIV or herpes, doctors can prescribe antibiotics which should clear it up quickly. But experts are becoming increasingly worried about the effectiveness of the best-known of these, ciprofloxacin, since strains of gonorrhoea resistant to it started to emerge in Asia. An initiative set up to measure the prevalence of resistant strains found that in 2000, only one in 50 strains had this ability. In 2001, this had increased to 3.1% - but the latest figures, published in the Lancet medical journal, show that the figure has risen to 9.8%. In some areas things were worse - in the Yorkshire and Humberside area, more than 18% of strains isolated had resistant qualities. The situation is not as bad as in China and Hong Kong - where 98% of strains have resistance to common antibiotics - but the researchers are alarmed by the finding. They wrote: "It is a general principle with gonorrhoea that the chosen treatment should eliminate infection in at least 95% of patients, and ciprofloxacin no longer meets this criterion. All is not completely lost, though. In the Cleveland, Ohio, area, the bug’s resistance to Cipro has fluctuated from year to year, so with some restraint in antibiotic choice, the resistance may be able to be overcome. (To find out what sort of gonorrhea is incubating in your state, click here.) Although gonorrhea is still with is, thankfully it isn’t as wide spread as it once was. Although we still routinely put antibiotic drops in newborn’s eyes to prevent blindness from congenital gonococcal conjunctivitis, and we still screen all pregnant women for it, we at least no longer have mailboxes on our street corners like this. posted by Sydney on 5/30/2003 08:31:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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