Gonorrhea has been a part of the human condition for thousands of years. Michael Mulvey, chief of antimicrobial resistance with the Public Health Agency of Canada. 'We're starting to see pan-drug resistant strains that are really untreatable (and) with gonorrhea we're getting very, very close to that point,' said Dr. No matter the reason, one thing is clear: whenever the super-gonorrhea comes along, the environment is ripe for it to take off.

Others are studying whether PrEP - a daily pill that at-risk people can take to prevent HIV infection - is encouraging people to ditch condoms, though STD rates were already trending upwards before the prophylaxis became widely available. Some experts suspect hookup apps are playing a role. Researchers are still trying to understand these troubling trends. In 2014, the Public Health Agency of Canada recorded 16,285 cases of gonorrhea - up 15 per cent from the previous year, and the highest number since 1990. Meanwhile, sexually-transmitted diseases are once again on the rise. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last month. 'If resistance continues to increase and spread our current treatment regimen will eventually fail,' the U.S. While all of these cases were ultimately treatable, they are red flags to the global health community. In January 2009, a Quebec woman was infected with a strain that had a weaker response to ceftriaxone - and failed to respond to azithromycin at all. health officials also reported seven gonorrhea cases in Hawaii with reduced susceptibility to the dual therapy, a first in the U.S.ДЄ similar case has already been seen in Canada, too. In June, British doctors reported the first-known gonorrhea case that was highly resistant to both antibiotics. While new drugs are under development, they are still years or decades away from reaching market.ДЄnd the current treatment is already losing ground. If this end-of-the-line therapy stops working, there will be no antibiotics left in the medicine cabinet.

Resistant strains have now emerged against every class of antibiotic and doctors are down to their last available treatment: a dual therapy that combines azithromycin, an antibiotic in pill form, and ceftriaxone, an injectable. The World Health Organization says as many as 110 million people are infected each year and when left untreated, infections can lead to painful complications, infertility, or even death, in rare cases.ДЄnd as a superbug, gonorrhea is particularly super. 'Ultimately, the future of humanity may depend on our ability to respond to the great challenges of antimicrobial resistance,' said Peter Thomson, president of the 71 t UN General Assembly.Д«ut among the many villains populating the superbug universe, Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a particularly worrisome character.ДЇor starters, gonorrhea is the second-most common sexually-transmitted bacterial disease, after chlamydia. Last month, the United Nations held a historic meeting to discuss the superbug crisis, which the World Health Organization calls a 'slow-motion tsunami. 'It begs the question: What will gonorrhea look like in the new world?'ДЄntimicrobial resistance is now widely recognized as a major global health problem that threatens to reverse medical advances and cripple economies, particularly in the developing world. 'But now the concern is that we could go back to a time when we'll have to be hospitalized or use very antiquated and mechanical treatments. Vanessa Allen, chief medical microbiologist with Public Health Ontario. 'Gonorrhea has mostly (become) a nuisance infection,' said Dr. Mercifully, such remedies are only found in the history books and for more than 80 years, gonorrhea infections have been cured - painlessly - with antibiotics.Д«ut with the rise of drug-resistant superbugs, and sexually transmitted disease rates rebounding around the world, doctors are once again worrying about a threat that they haven't had to face since pre-war times: untreatable gonorrhea. For men suffering from 'chordee' - a complication where the penis becomes curved - one 19th-century doctor recommended placing the organ on a table and striking 'a violent blow with a book.' Before antibiotics, many 'treatments' for gonorrhea were more cringe-inducing than the disease: mercury injections in the urethra, for example, or hot water flushed into a woman's genital tract.

Super strain gonorrhea 2014