Another reason for sexual purity

Incurable gonorrhea may be next superbug - Some strains of STD showing signs of becoming resistant to all treatments

Excerpt:

Gonorrhea has a long history of evading medicine’s attempts to cure it. In the 1930s, sulfa-based drugs worked, but soon lost potency as the bacteria adapted. Penicillin came up to bat in the 1940s. In New York City, Los Angeles, and points in between, posters appeared stating “Penicillin Cures Gonorrhea in 4 Hours,” sometimes underneath words urging citizens to buy war bonds to “Thrash the Axis.”

Just as defeating Hitler and the Japanese emperor had become an all-consuming national priority, health officials, armed with the new miracle drug penicillin, offered hope that the scourge of “VD” could be wiped out, too.

Penicillin was a miracle, but eventually doctors had to use more and more to kill the bug. Still, a shot of penicillin remained the treatment of choice until 1985, when rising resistance to penicillin, and the fact that many people are allergic to it, forced health officials to give other antibiotics their turns.

But as they did, strains of the bacteria morphed to make the antibiotics less effective. A February report from a group of Taiwanese doctors found that during the five years between 1999 and 2004, 40 percent of gonorrhea isolated from their patients was resistant to penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin and ciprofloxacin, all drugs which used to kill off gonorrhea like magic bullets.

The cephalosporins are all that’s left.

In May of 2009, doctors at Sydney, Australia’s Prince of Wales Hospital reported two cases of failed treatment of gonorrhea of the pharynx (typically resulting from oral sex or oral-anal contact). The drug they used is called ceftriaxone, a cephalosporin given by injection. There have also been scattered reports of increasing drug resistance to the most commonly used pill form of cephalosporin, although not in the U.S. so far, said Dr. Kimberly Workowski, associate professor of medicine at Emory University and the CDC’s coordinator of STD treatment guidelines. The CDC monitors the issue through its Gonorrhea Isolate Surveillance Project which receives reports from health clinics all over the country.

Workowski is concerned, though. For one thing, some people who are allergic to penicillin may also be allergic to cephalosporins.

Since people with some forms of gonorrhea may not show symptoms, their partners may have no idea they're infected. The pill form of cephalosporin, which can be used for uncomplicated rectal or urogenital infections, is “only 70 percent effective” in treating pharyngeal gonorrhea, she noted. Since infection of the pharynx often carries no symptoms, people treated for urogenital infection may not know they carry a pharyngeal infection, too. That gives the disease a safe harbor from which it can launch infections of more people.

Comment: Pic is of WWII poster. Hebrews 13:4, is a valuable lesson: "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. ". Another interesting article is here.