- “Supergonorrhea” started to be a trend on Twitter at the weekend after a World Health Organization official told the Sun that STD may be becoming more resistant to antibiotics.
- The pandemic has not created a super strain of gonorrhea, nor do we have evidence of an increase in cases yet.
- But experts told Insider that over-prescribing antibiotics – whether in an attempt to treat COVID-19 or related infections – may be making STDs more resistant to treatment.
- Supergonorrhea is no more serious or transmissible than gonorrhea, but it has fewer treatment options.
- Visit the Insider home page for more stories.
If you browsed Twitter over the weekend, you may have come across a loud and scary phrase: supergonorrhea.
—Restricted (@christoq) December 27, 2020
The social media panic came after a World Health Organization (WHO) representative told the Sun that the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea may be becoming more resistant to certain antibiotics used to treat it, threatening an increase in cases of intractable “supergonorrhea”. (The term derives from “superbugs”, a colloquial term used to refer to bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics.)
Although there is still no evidence of an increase in pandemic-related drug-resistant gonorrhea, experts told Insider that it is a valid concern.
The more insects are exposed to the drugs used to kill them, the more familiar with them they can become, mutating to find ways to survive them. Azithromycin, an antibiotic used to treat gonorrhea, is also commonly prescribed for chest infections and pneumonia – conditions often seen in patients with COVID-19. It was even tested as a treatment for severe COVID-19 early in the pandemic.
Although it has been found to be ineffective in treating COVID-19, experts say azithromycin is still being increasingly prescribed, which could worsen the existing problem of superbugs such as antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.
What is supergonorrhea?
According to Dr. Edward Hook, director of the Jefferson County STD Control Program, Alabama Department of Health, gonorrhea has gradually built up resistance to the antibiotics used to treat it.
Ciprofloxacin used to be an antibiotic recommended by the CDC to treat gonorrhea in the 1990s, but in 2007 the agency changed its protocol: a high percentage of gonorrhea cases were reported to be resistant to the antibiotic. Treatment was changed to the combination of ceftriaxone and azithromycin antibiotics.
More than a decade later, in 2018, health officials signaled an increase in gonorrhea cases that were resistant to azithromycin and updated their treatment recommendations. Doctors, they said, should treat patients with an injection of ceftriaxone.
Experts say doctors who prescribe more antibiotics during the pandemic to treat COVID-19, particularly azithromycin, may be contributing to this resistance.
“The indiscriminate use of antibiotics can really increase the pressure on the development of gonorrhea resistance,” said Dr. Peter Leone, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health, to Insider .
This resistance, along with fewer people being tested and treated for STDs during the pandemic, may be of concern.
The symptoms of ‘supergonorrhea’ and gonorrhea are no different – but your treatment options are.
Although supergonorrhea sounds frightening, experts say the term itself is more conducive to fear than is justified.
Dr. H. Hunter Handsfield, professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Washington’s Center for AIDS and STD and an adviser to the American Sexual Health Association, told Insider that “antibiotic resistance does not ‘strengthen’ gonorrhea or any other STD” because do not make transmission easier or symptoms more severe.
The only real difference between gonorrhea and supergonorrhea is that the latter has fewer treatment options, which is why Handsfield considers the term inappropriate.
Experts say that antibiotic-resistant STIs are not an immediate health crisis, as ceftriaxone is still effective in treating gonorrhea, but the concern that arises with these types of STDs is that makes them more difficult to treat.
“The cause for concern has less to do with the fact that the process will continue – or perhaps even accelerate – and more to do with the fact that we have less and less options on how to treat gonorrhea,” Hook told Insider. .
Experts recommend that people continue to get tested for STDs and practice safe sex and COVID-19 precautions.
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