Super Gonorrhea could be spread from antibiotic misuse for Covid-19 coronavirus

You want 2021 to be a great night. But not in a super gonorrhea type.

“Super gonorrhea” is waiting on Twitter right now because, well, why not? It is 2020, after all. And what better thing to have at the end of a year that gave us the Covid-19 pandemic, a scarcity of everything, enduring drama in the White House, and an endless Presidential election? Think of this sexually transmitted disease as the pie à la method, the night cap, the last wipe of 2020.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, super gonorrhea isn’t really good to have. It doesn’t inspire you to tell your partner, “I came back from the doctor’s office, and I have good news for you.” Nah, telling him or her that you have true gonorrhea is as positive as saying you have sexual syphilis or candy-covered chlamydia. Super gonorrhea is no longer a comic book hero, just in case you ask:

If made into a film, super gonorrhea could result Ghost Rider run for the worst comic book movie ever.

Instead, super gonorrhea occurs when the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, develops a high level of resistance to antibiotics commonly used to treat the disease: azithromycin and ceftriaxone. As I told back in 2017 for Forbes, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed these series of N. gonorrhoeae on the list of the most dangerous superbugs in the world. When making your bucket list, don’t add anything to this WHO superbug list. “We’ve run out of ways to treat your disease,” ran up there with “no one can fly” in the list of things you don’t want to hear.

Then in 2018, I covered for Forbes a case of a U.S. man who had happened to be super “superfluous” while traveling in Southeast Asia. The man developed symptoms a month later and was diagnosed with super gonorrhea. As a result, the man’s regular partner in the UK had to undergo a test but completed a negative test for the superbug. Think about the conversation that might have taken place there. “Well, you had sex with someone else while you were traveling, you contracted gonorrhea, and it was horrible gonorrhea, but at least you didn’t give it to me,” you would look at the glass as half-filled.

So why is super gonorrhea moving on Twitter when there are so many other things that can move? Well, some in Twittersphere have explained:

But it looks like it came from a WHO spokesman telling The sun that excessive use of azithromycin and lack of services for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STIs) during Covid-19 coronavirus infection may promote superficial gonorrhea. Not the sun as in that ball of fire in the skies but The Sun as in the UK publication.

In fact, the use of azithromycin may be an option for more stable forms of gonorrhea. Remember earlier this year when some were touting the use of azithromycin in combination with hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19? This was even before well-constructed and implemented clinical studies to evaluate the safety and efficacy of such medications for the treatment of severe respiratory diseases coronavirus syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV2). Since then clinical studies have not found sufficient evidence to support such a practice. As a result the National Institute of Health (NIH) Covid-19 Treatment Management Panel now “recommends against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin for the treatment of Covid-19” in hospitalized or non-hospitalized patients.

For all who might say, “what is the harm of continuing to use azithromycin to treat SARS-CoV2 infections,” when there were few alternatives, well this is a real answer. By using antibiotics unevenly on everything as if they were Nutella they can opt for resistant organisms. Antibiotics such as azithromycin are considered “broad spectrum” because they can kill or activate a wide range of different bacteria. That can be helpful when you don’t know what is causing the disease or when there is no other option. However, every time you use a broad-spectrum antibiotic rather than one that is much more specific to what you are trying to treat, such an antibiotic can wipe out the weakest versions of bacteria, leaving those strongest which is more durable. The strongest ones left then multiply and grow much larger. This is how more stable versions of the bacteria take over and spread.

One problem with Covid-19 pandemic is that other pathogens have not rested. They didn’t spend most of their time on Zoom calls mocking each other and using the video filters and saying, “hey look at me, herpes with a hat. “While the social distance of humans may have spread some pathogens such as the flu, 2020 may have been a good one for others.

After all, not only has the pandemic prompted doctors to try different antibiotics to treat Covid-19 coronavirus, it has also reduced doctors’ treatment for STIs right. The pandemic has closed many “unnecessary” health services or forced many patients to seek proper medical care. So, people may be running around with untreated infections or trying to self-treat with potentially inappropriate antibiotics.

As I said again, Covid-19 coronavirus infection has been the manifestation of many of the problems that have already existed in society. One of them is antibiotic resistant bacteria. If nothing is done to better address this problem, pathogens like super gonorrhea will be far from gone in 2021 and beyond.