Increasingly drug-resistant strains of the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea could develop into versions that cannot be killed by any known antibiotic, a leading sexual health expert from the U.K. said during a scientific meeting in Scotland last week, MSNBC reports.

Catherine Ison, director of the sexually transmitted bacteria reference library at the U.K.’s Health Protection Agency, said that most antibiotics to treat gonorrhea have lost their efficacy. She added that some strains of the infection also show resistance to cephalosporins, the one class of medications that is still effective against most strains. “If this problem isn’t addressed, there’s a very real possibility that gonorrhea will become a very difficult infection to treat,” Ison said.

In 2008, there were 336,742 reported cases of gonorrhea in the U.S., making it the nation’s second-most commonly reported STI, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, that data might significantly underestimate the actual number of cases in the U.S. because not all people infected with gonorrhea are aware of their status, MSNBC reports. Edward Hook, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an expert on STIs, estimated, “We will probably have something like 700,000 cases of gonorrhea this year.”

According to MSNBC, gonorrhea cases that are undiagnosed or unsuccessfully treated can lead to other serious health issues, including pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility and ectopic pregnancies. People infected with gonorrhea are about three times more likely to become infected with HIV if they come in contact with the virus. Teenage girls ages 15 through 19 account for more cases of gonorrhea than any other age group, MSNBC reports.

Experts Aim To Curb Resistance

Although the “doomsday scenario” would be for gonorrhea to suddenly become resistant to cephalosporin, it is more likely that the infection’s resistance to the medications would gradually evolve, Hook said. He added that drug resistance would give drug companies an incentive to create new drugs to treat the infection.

In the meantime, CDC is developing other strategies, including an NIH trial to examine alternative therapies, MSNBC reports.

Drug Resistance an Issue for Other STIs

Some experts are also concerned that drug-resistance could become an issue for other bacterial STIs. About 30% of women with gonorrhea are co-infected with chlamydia, according to MSNBC. Kimberly Workowski, CDC’s coordinator of STI treatment guidelines and an associate professor of medicine at Emory University, said that a small number of chlamydia strains have shown signs of developing drug-resistance. In addition, the prevalence of a drug-resistant strain of syphilis jumped from 0% to 56% at one San Francisco clinic between 2000 and 2004, MSNBC reports (Alexander, MSNBC, 4/8).

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