A Change in Antibiotics for Gonorrhea

The rates of drug-resistant Gonorrhea in the United States have amplified so seriously in the last five years that doctors should now treat the disease with a dissimilar class of antibiotics, the last line of protection for the sexually transmitted disease.

The percentage of drug-resistant gonorrhea cases amongst heterosexual men shoot, to 6.7 percent in 2006 compared with 0.6 percent in 2001, spokesperson from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Standard check of gonorrhea cases is conducted between men who go to S.T.D. clinics. New data from such sites in 26 cities of US show that rates of drug-resistant gonorrhea among heterosexual men at the clinics last year arrive at 20 percent in Honolulu and more than 26 percent in Philadelphia and four areas in California, Long Beach, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.

Among gay men at the clinics, the rates of this bacterial infection jumped, to 38 percent. For 14 years, the majority of cases of gonorrhea have been treated with a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Now, officials at the center are influencing doctors to set down drugs in the cephalosporin class.

Health officials are also concerned about enormously drug-resistant tuberculosis and a number of other microbes like Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella penumoniae and Acinetobacter species that are resistant to most antibiotics.

The United States has a likely 700,000 new cases of gonorrhea a year, occurring between sexually active people of both genders at all ages. It is the second most frequently reported infectious disease, behind chlamydia, another sexually transmitted disease.

After a substantial decline from 1975 to 1997, the gonorrhea rates had stabilized in recent years.

The disease centers say doctors should now recommend ceftriaxone, sold as Rocephin, which is injected once into a muscle. The centers also advise the one-time use of cefixime, or Suprax.

Over the years, gonorrhea has turn out to be resistant to a number of antibiotic classes starting with sulfa, then tetracyclines and the penicillin before fluoroquinolones.

The disease centers have steadily cautioned against using fluoroquinolones for the reason that of the emergence of resistance in different regions.