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posted by janrinok on Wednesday August 31 2016, @12:07PM   Printer-friendly

The World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending the use of cephalosporins to treat gonorrhea rather than quinolones, due to emergence of quinolone-resistant strains. However, some strains of gonorrhea are already resistant to drugs in the newly recommended class of antibiotics:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned back in 2012 that one of two drugs in the class of antibiotics the WHO now recommends, cephalosporins, was in danger of becoming useless to treat gonorrhea, at least in the U.S, and recommended that doctors stop prescribing it. Since then, the CDC's recommended treatment for gonorrhea has been a dual therapy, with the two antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin, but an analysis in July warned that the bacteria could even become resistant to that combination.

As for when antibiotic options will run out altogether, Teodora Wi of the WHO's Department of Reproductive Health and Research tells the journal Science, "We will have to have new drugs in 5 years, I think." The U.S. government is spending millions of dollars through the CDC and National Institutes of Health to develop new antibiotics and combat resistance.

The WHO also revised its guidelines for treating two other sexually transmitted infections, chlamydia and syphilis. Neither is facing severe antibiotic resistance. Syphilis, for example, can be treated with a single dose of penicillin, although there is a worldwide shortage of the drug.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Hartree on Wednesday August 31 2016, @01:54PM

    by Hartree (195) on Wednesday August 31 2016, @01:54PM (#395675)

    "an AIDS cure would kill the pharma industry"

    Nonsense. None of the drugs for it are even in the top ten in terms of profits for them. There just aren't enough AIDS patient in wealthy countries for it to be.

    If you want profits go for cholesterol meds (Lipitor for example), or gastro-esophageal reflux treatments like Nexium or psychiatric meds. Large numbers of people use them.

    (I'm hardly defending big pharma. They are many times incredibly cutthroat. It's just AIDS is a poor example in this case.)

    Much of the problem with antibiotic resistance is that Mom Nature is just so much better at this game than we are. Organisms have been adapting to antibiotics produced by other bacteria or the creatures they infect for billions of years. In fact, most of the resistance genes that bacteria use against our antibiotics are old. They just were only in a very small subset of the population because there's a cost to carry them along and make the product they code for. (Example: Making lots of Beta Lactamase uses up cellular resources and isn't worth it unless something is making lots of penicillin-like antibiotics in your environment.)

    Yes, we do get some new adaptations, but mostly it's just Mom Nature resurrecting something from a game she played millions/billions of years ago. Humans with our "wonder drugs" are Johnny come latelies, and most weren't created by us. We borrowed them from existing microorganisms. It's no surprise there would be a countermeasure out there.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday September 01 2016, @03:39PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday September 01 2016, @03:39PM (#396211) Journal

    Add to that, a cure for AIDS would be a huge PR win, in an industry where most players spend as much on marketing as they do on R&D. It's hard to buy PR like being able to put in every advert: 'Buy drug X, from the people that eradicated AIDS'.

    --
    sudo mod me up