A ‘superbug’ strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to all recommended antibiotics has been discovered.
Scientists warn it could transform a once easily treatable sexually-transmitted disease into a global public health threat.
The new strain of the disease – called H041 – was found in Japan and leaves doctors with no other option than to try untested medicines to combat it.
Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, who discovered the strain with colleagues in samples from Kyoto, described it as ‘alarming.’
The team’s analysis of the strain found it was extremely resistant to all cephalosporin-class antibiotics – the last remaining drugs still effective in treating gonorrhea.
Since antibiotics became the standard treatment for gonorrhea in the 1940s, this bacterium has shown a remarkable capacity to develop resistance mechanisms to all drugs introduced to control it,’ he said.
Mr Unemo will present details of the finding at a conference of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research in Quebec today.
Gonorrhea is a bacterial sexually transmitted infection and if left untreated can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women.
It can cause epididymitis, a painful condition of the ducts attached to the testicles that may lead to infertility.
If it spreads to the blood or joints the condition can be life threatening.
The infection, which used to be known as ‘the clap’, is particularly prevalent among young people aged 16-24.
They accounted for nearly half of the 16,500 new cases of gonorrhoea reported in 2008
Rebecca Findlay, from the sexual health charity FPA, said: ‘Obviously prevention is better than cure.
‘So being confident about using condoms and being able to talk to your partner normally about safer sex becomes even more important when we start seeing that there maybe problems in the future with treating gonorrhoea.’
British scientists warned last year that there was a real risk of gonorrhea becoming a superbug after increasing reports of drug resistance in south-east Asia and Australia.
Experts say the best way to reduce the risk of even greater resistance developing is to treat gonorrhea with combinations of two or more types of antibiotic at the same time.
However, Mr Unemo said that experience from previous degrees of resistance acquired by gonorrhea suggested this new multi-drug resistant strain could spread around the world within 10 years.
He added that there would need to be trials to assess whether carbapenems – known as the most powerful antibiotics yet devised – might be a last ditch option for treating this new gonorrhea strain.
