July 12, 2011 | Health Matters

Super gonorrhea discovered

Gonorrhea ain't what it used to be.

The once easily treated disease has been becoming resistant to anti-biotics over the years. And now scientists have found a strain in Japan which cannot be cured with any known treatments.

"This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery," lead researcher Magnus Unemo, professor at the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria in Örebro, Sweden, said in a statement. "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.

"While it is still too early to assess if this new strain has become widespread, the history of newly emergent resistance in the bacterium suggests that it may spread rapidly unless new drugs and effective treatment programs are developed," the statement continued.

As a superbug, this strain of bacteria could impact a large number of people if it spreads to the general public. This means new strategies to combat the disease will be needed, and new treatments explored.

While so far the only documented case of the incurable strain is in Japan, the treatable version accounts for an estimated 700,000 new cases each year in the U.S. alone, making it the most common STD in North America, after chlamydia.

Scientists Discover Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea 'Superbug'  [TIME]

Resistant gonorrhea strain found in Japan  [CBC]