File photo of gonorrhea cells (© Getty Images)

Drug-resistant gonorrhea apparently is here

1/10/2013

Doctors in Canada have made an unsettling discovery – a strain of gonorrhea that appears to be resistant to the only oral antibiotic treatment. Doctors in Toronto treated 133 people who tested positive for gonorrhea with the drug cefixime, the most commonly prescribed oral antibiotic. Resistance to the drug had first been discovered in Japan several years ago. The Canadian doctors found that nine of their patients still had gonorrhea after completing treatment, meaning an untreatable strain of the common STD may have arrived in North America. To fight growing drug resistance, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has recommended that doctors no longer prescribe a single antibiotic treatment; instead they recommend injections followed by regimens of oral antibiotics. [Source]

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