Over the weekend, a horrible pairing of words began moving on social media: super gonorrhea. That’s because the World Health Organization recently warned that pandemic is helping to stimulate antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including the bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Unfortunately, the situation is just likely to get worse.
Fighting antibiotics has been a slow crisis for decades, but the latter effects become difficult to ignore. Currently, so-called superbugs are estimated to kill around 35,000 Americans per annum, in excess of 700,000 people across the globe.
One of the most worrying things superbug threats is today Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the named bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is usually not fatal and often has no symptoms, but if left untreated, can lead to complications such as arthritis, joint pain, and skin rashes, as well as infertility and chronic pelvic pain. The bacteria can be passed from mother to baby during delivery, leading to a potentially fatal infection or leading to serious complications such as blindness. Special symptoms include green or yellow discharge from the genitals and pain during urination.
These bacteria are scary because they are growing incomprehensible to first–line antibiotics used for their treatment. In 2018, UK doctors reported finds one with the first known case of gonorrhea who was strongly opposed to the combination medication used in most countries as a standard treatment: the antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Although human gonorrhea could be treated with another antibiotic, the case confirmed experts’ worst fears. Other cases of super gonorrhea, as well as others that are highly waterproof sexually transmitted diseases, have been recorded ever since.
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During this year, experts with the World Health Organization and elsewhere have been sound the alarm on antibiotic resistance is exacerbated as a result of the pandemic. For one, doctors have been routinely prescribing antibiotics to hospitalized patients with covid-19, a virus-induced infection (usually, antibiotics do not work against viruses). This seems to be because patients in hospital can cause secondary infections with bacteria. Early research had also suggested that the antibiotic azithromycin may have additional antiviral effects, possibly in combination with other drugs such as hydroxychloroquine.
Since then, however, there are studies on it lorg nothing on azithromycin, taken alone or with hydroxychloroquine life-saving effect on covid-19 patients. There is other research on it lorg doctors usually prescribe antibiotics to patients without any evidence of bacterial infections.
That brings us to last week, when the UK retailer The Sun reported a WHO warning about gonorrhea. In addition to the above, the WHO also noted that the pandemic appears to cause people to delay STI testing and medical care, raising the risk of not getting it. people never find out about their gonorrhea or even try inappropriate self-medication.. The misuse and overuse of antibiotics, especially azithromycin, just adds more dynamite to the keg powder which is super gonorrhea.
“Such a situation can trigger fuel in gonorrhea,” a WHO spokesman said told The sun.
What is worse is that rates of gonorrhea and other STIs have risen in many places recently. For example, a registration number of STIs reported in 2018, with cases of gonorrhea climbing for the fifth straight year. It is possible (namely probable) that the pandemic has reduced the sexual activity of many people this year. But antibiotic-immune bacteria are not gone, and cases of super gonorrhea and other immune diseases will undoubtedly continue to rise in the coming years.
There is still hope that antibiotics are much newer and other treatments can be developed in time to avoid the worst-a case scenario, where common bacterial diseases are becoming as dangerous as they were a hundred years ago. Scientists are also working on it vaccines for diseases such as gonorrhea. But no one clear solution on the horizon, and the clock runs out. In 2014, a report commissioned by the UK government measured if nothing was done, annual worldwide antibiotic- deathsimmune diseases would lead to cancer deaths by 2050, with approximately 10 million deaths each year. By then, super gonorrhea is the least of our worries.