Post: #1

Bad news about Gonorrhea.

Sex and the Superbug

The new strain of gonorrhea is coming out of Japan, but dirty pussies aren't responsible. Instead, researchers have found a different breeding ground, the back of the throat, which allows the germ to mutate.

Quote: Gonorrhea is commonly thought of as a painful genital infection. But the microbe also grows robustly in the pharynx, at the back of the throat. With hairlike structures that extend from the cell surface, it scavenges DNA that has been cast loose by the death or dissolution of other microbes, and incorporates them into its own genome. This turns out to be a highly efficient way of acquiring resistance to antibiotics. Multiplying in the pharynx, the gonococcus regularly encounters infectious microbes; these include other strains of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea and unrelated microbes that have accumulated mutations to withstand antibiotics of the kind taken indiscriminately for sore throats and other ailments. A 2011 study by researchers in Japan contends that the Kyoto strain acquired its resistance to ceftriaxone in the pharynx, from other bacteria of the Neisseria family that live there.

Of course, if large numbers people have infected throats, mouth love must be to blame.

Quote:A driving factor behind the rise in gonorrhea infections, as well as the trend toward total antibiotic resistance, is our complacent attitude toward oral sex. Saliva contains enzymes that destroy gonorrhea, so kissing and cunnilingus don’t spread it. But fellatio, which brings the tip of the urethra near the pharynx, carries a high risk of infecting one partner or the other. According to Dr. Peter Rice, a gonorrhea expert at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, fellatio “is the only predictable way to transmit gonococcal infection to the pharynx.”

There is some good news. It's not fatal.

Quote:Even without antibiotics, most people who contract gonorrhea will recover spontaneously, as their immune systems eliminate the microbe. This can take weeks or months; in the meantime, the infection can damage vital tissues, causing scarring and a painful stricture of the urethra in men and pelvic inflammatory disease in women.

The article's not all doom and gloom. There's this anecdote about what I'm assuming to be an IRT at the clinic.

Quote:Recently, a twenty-four-year-old Indian man had come in after noticing some swelling at the tip of his penis. He had had only two partners in his life: a woman in India and another in the U.S., with whom he had not used a condom. Huang got a urine specimen and drew blood to test for syphilis and H.I.V. “You never know,” she said. The urine test came back positive for gonorrhea.

Post: #2

This sounds scary. There was a thread on here last year about a stronger type of Gonorrhea making its way around. I think it was in Asia or Europe.

Post: #3

my understanding is that they are having trouble treating gonorrhea with gay men who rack up way more sexual partners and who satistically have sex with others who have high rates of stds like the clap. its because they keep having to come back and get treated that there bodies are not responding to the antibotics like before. i think for the average guy who avoids barebacking prostitues shouldnt have to worry about the effectiveness of antibotics in their body treating gonorrhea

Post: #4

(09-26-2012 12:22 AM)bacon Wrote:  my understanding is that they are having trouble treating gonorrhea with gay men who rack up way more sexual partners and who satistically have sex with others who have high rates of stds like the clap. its because they keep having to come back and get treated that there bodies are not responding to the antibotics like before. i think for the average guy who avoids barebacking prostitues shouldnt have to worry about the effectiveness of antibotics in their body treating gonorrhea

According to the article, there are no cases of gonorrhea resistant to all antibiotics in the US. That's not the case in Europe or Asia.

Gays and prostitutes are responsible for gonorrhea's evolution, and they have a higher risk of infection. But, more likely than not, a strain of drug-resistant gonorrhea will enter into the general heterosexual population. So, while the average guy doesn't have to worry now, in a few years it could get ugly.

Post: #5

Damn...I thought all I had to worry about was a bitch having gingivitis or bleeding gums! HA HA!

Post: #6

I'm as worried about antibiotic resistance as the next guy, but this is not as serious as it sounds.

These stories about "untreatable gonorrhea" are an absolutely classic case of hype about medical issues in the popular press. What this and other articles are referring to is the emergence of resistance to ceftriaxone, which while alarming due to the fact that high rates of resistance already forced a switch away from fluoroquinolone drugs like Cipro as first-line therapy, is hardly the last available line of defense. There are a lot more big gun antibiotics that will readily kill the bugs in case ceftriaxone resistance becomes widespread. True, these drugs are more costly, less well-studied, and may be harder to administer or have more side effects, but it's not like we're on the verge of having players drop dead left and right because from getting blown by some skank with a biological warfare laboratory for a mouth. I have not heard of a single case of gonorrhea being isolated that was resistant to literally all known antibiotics (which is what these lay-press stories seem to imply), and I strongly suspect that will remain the case for a long time to come.

Moreover, it bears pointing out that 98-99% of suspected gonorrhea infections today are successfully treated with a single dose of ceftriaxone. The 1-2% of cases that don't resolve are much more likely to be due to misdiagnosis or co-infection with Chlamydia than resistance.

Post: #7

gringochileno is probably right. the MEDIA loves to whip up fear, if its not terrorists, or the swine flu its usually stuff like this used to keep people watching and reading the news for the latest developements