Over the summer, reports had come in about a superbug strain of gonorrhea … and now doctors in Britain are already using an alternative treatment on the STD.
The BBC reports that “doctors must stop using the usual treatment cefiximine and instead use two more powerful antibiotics.”
“One is a pill and the other a jab.” But patients who don't want the jab can get oral antibiotics instead.
The British Health Protection Agency says the change is necessary because of increasing resistance to the virus and that “we may be heading to a point when the disease incurable unless new treatments can be found.”
Tests on samples of the disease taken from patients have shown “reduced susceptibility” to the usual treatment, an antibiotic called cefiximine, in 20 percent of cases in 2010 ... twice as high as in 2009.
“The World Health Organization recommends that the first-line antibiotic used is changed when treatment failure in patients reaches 5 percent,” the BBC reports, but the new treatment is being given preemptively because of the sudden, high rise in resistance.
All the more reason to play safe. Think of that old song that goes, ”Wrap it up ... I'll take it …”