’Super’ gonorrhea strain resistant to all antibiotics

Gonorrhea, the world’s most common sexually transmitted disease (STD), has re-surfaced with vengeance, even more bulletproof to antibiotics than before. A new strain - dubbed H041- resistant to all currently available antibiotics, has been discovered in Japan.

The discovery was presented by Dr. Magnus Unemo, Dr. Makoto Ohnishi, and colleagues on July 11 at a conference in Quebec City, Canada.

“This is both an alarming and predictable discovery,” said Dr. Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in a statement.

Multi-drug resistance is “predictable” because most strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterial organism that causes gonorrhea, are resistant to at least one type of antibiotics. When exposed to them, only the “fittest” of bacteria with stronger resistance survive and are able to pass on their robust genes to their offspring - equally equipped with antibiotic-resistance. This “survival of the fittest”, in naturalist Charles Darwin’s words, eventually creates a strain with solid resistance to certain antibiotics.

Today, H041 is seen as an “alarming” threat to global health, seeing that there are no alternative drugs in the pharmaceutical pipeline. “U.S. gonorrhea control strategy relies upon effective antibiotic therapy," the CDC claimed on Friday. "No other well-studied and effective antibiotic treatment options or combinations currently are available."

According to a report released by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on July 8, what once used to be an easily treatable infection now responds feebly to Cephalospirins - the last remaining class of antibiotic still effective. Others such as penicillin and tetracycline have been obsolete since the 1970s.

One of the biggest concerns is that the super strain will not only evolve, but also spread. 700,000 new cases of Gonorrhea are reported each year in United States. As commonplace as it is, gonorrhea may bring physical damage to patients if it forces new, costly methods of treatment.

Left untreated, patients may suffer from scarring of the reproductive tract, and in women, lifelong infertility, or pelvic inflammatory disease.

"While it is still too early to assess if this new strain [from Japan] has become widespread, the history of newly emergent resistance in the bacterium suggests that it may spread rapidly unless new drugs and effective treatment programs are developed," Unemo commented.