drug resistance – GOLLYGEE!

The New Yorker magazine reports this month on the appearance of drug resistant gonorrhea. The trend is worrisome to the medical community. Even though the body can usually get rid of the infection without antibiotics, most times it can’t do so before it wreaks havoc and leaves damage. The abstract is below. Click here for the article (requires subscription).

ABSTRACT: MEDICAL DISPATCHES about the rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea. In January, 2009, a prostitute visited a clinic in Kyoto, Japan, for a routine checkup. Her lab test came back positive for gonorrhea. She was given several doses of ceftriaxone, the definitive treatment for gonorrhea, over a period of time, but her condition persisted. Now, public-health experts view the Kyoto case as something far more alarming: the emergence of a strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to the last drug available against it, and the harbinger of a sexually transmitted global epidemic. Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported infectious disease in the U.S. Only one class of drugs, called cephalosporins—cefixime and ceftriaxone—is known to reliably treat it, and for several years resistance to cefixime has been rising. Some public-health officials predict that in five to eight years the superbug will be widespread. In the U.S., gonorrhea in general is linked to poverty and youth. Scientists have made little progress in developing a vaccine that would protect against a gonococcus infection. The primary hope for stemming the expected epidemic of resistant gonorrhea lies in persuading people to alter their behavior. Mentions Boston Medical Center and the walk-in clinic at Fenway Health, in Boston.

Malaria is still a big killer across the globe, especially in more tropical climes. Now signs of resistance are beginning to show. From Scientific American:

The malaria parasite is a wily organism, shifting its life stages as it flits from human to mosquito and back again. It still kills some 600,000 people each year and has outwitted eradication efforts, having developed resistance to previously popular drugs and, thus far, eluded vaccine-induced immunity.

The arrival of a powerful drug in the late-20th century gave researchers new hope. Called artemisinin and based on a traditional Chinese herbal remedy, it cleared the parasite faster and more thoroughly than any other current antimalarial. Researchers are still somewhat uncertain about exactly how it works, but they know that it targets the parasite as it infects red blood cells.

But the hope that artemisinin would serve as a final, exterminanting blow against malaria has begun to fade. Since 2008 patients in Southeast Asia have been slower to lose the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum than they once were. And this precursor to resistance seems to be spreading, despite efforts to carefully use artemisinin (by giving it in combination with other drugs) to avoid the emergence of resistance.

Science magazine has a report on the development of drug-resistant malaria on its website.

GOLLYGEE!

Tag: drug resistance

resitant gonorrhea

drug resistant malaria