Over the past decade, gonorrhea has gradually developed resistance to several antibiotics. A person with drug-resistant gonorrhea in the throat can transmit it when performing oral sex on a partner.Īddressing the antibiotic resistance, Thomas Hiltke, a program officer at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Sexually Transmitted Infections Branch, says, "It's at a critical stage. When gonorrhea in patients' throats is exposed to those drugs, the bacteria develop resistance to them. Throat infections after oral sex are often mistaken for strep throat or another infection by doctors, who prescribe antibiotics. Unprotected oral sex is one of the main reasons for antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea. "It's not seen as a killer disease, but it's a big public health threat." "This has been a real hard issue for people to take seriously," said Manica Balasegaram, head of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, a joint initiative of WHO and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative. Plus, STDs tend to weaken the integrity of genital mucosal linings, an important physical barrier to infections. Researchers don't entirely understand this connection, but they believe the body's immune response to gonorrhea allows HIV to hijack T-cells recruited to fight gonorrhea. If pregnant, women with gonorrhea can have premature births or pass the disease to their newborns, who can develop lifelong complications from infection.Įpidemiological studies have shown that gonorrhea and chlamydia infections can also make it easier to become infected with HIV. For women - most of whom never develop symptoms - complications can include infertility and chronic pelvic pain. Infected people can unwittingly pass it on because not everyone shows symptoms. Symptoms include painful urination, itching and a puslike discharge from the penis, vagina or anus, or a sore throat (in throat infections). About 78 million adults contracted the disease in 2012, according to the World Health Organization. Because while gonorrhea doesn't have the death toll that untreated HIV does - annual deaths from gonorrhea are about 2,300 - it still causes incalculable suffering. They surveyed 77 countries that participate in a global gonorrhea tracking program and found that more than 90 percent report some kind of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea, is developing resistance to the antibiotics that have successfully treated it for decades.Ī global group of experts on sexually transmitted diseases published an article in the scientific journal PLOS Medicine outlining the challenges of drug-resistant gonorrhea. Maybe it's because this sexually transmitted disease is known as "the clap" (perhaps a reference to the French term "clapier," meaning brothel, or to an early treatment - clapping a heavy object on the man's sexual organ to get discharge to come out).Īs the old (and not very funny) joke goes, "If you spread it around, is it called applause?"īut a new study illustrates why this sexually transmitted disease is no laughing matter. People like to make jokes about gonorrhea. This is a color-enhanced transmission electron micrograph image of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea.
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