(Reuters) - Scientists have found a "superbug" strain of gonorrhea in Japan that is resistant to all recommended antibiotics and say it could transform a once easily treatable infection into a global public health threat.
The new strain of the sexually transmitted disease -- called H041 -- cannot be killed by any currently recommended treatments for gonorrhea...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/11/us-gonorrhoea-superbug-idUSTRE76A0YO20110711
Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, who discovered the strain with colleagues from Japan in samples from Kyoto... [said] "Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it."
"Japan has historically been the place for the first emergence and subsequent global spread of different types of resistance in gonorrhea."
It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and is most prevalent in south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States alone... the number of cases is estimated at around 700,000 a year.
British scientists said last year that there was a real risk of gonorrhea becoming a superbug -- a bacteria that has mutated and become resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics -- after increasing reports of gonorrhea drug resistance emerged in Hong Kong, China, Australia and other parts of Asia.
The new strain of the sexually transmitted disease -- called H041 -- cannot be killed by any currently recommended treatments for gonorrhea...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/11/us-gonorrhoea-superbug-idUSTRE76A0YO20110711
Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, who discovered the strain with colleagues from Japan in samples from Kyoto... [said] "Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it."
"Japan has historically been the place for the first emergence and subsequent global spread of different types of resistance in gonorrhea."
It is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world and is most prevalent in south and southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In the United States alone... the number of cases is estimated at around 700,000 a year.
British scientists said last year that there was a real risk of gonorrhea becoming a superbug -- a bacteria that has mutated and become resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics -- after increasing reports of gonorrhea drug resistance emerged in Hong Kong, China, Australia and other parts of Asia.
