A common sexually transmitted disease may be becoming more drug-resistant, leaving doctors without an option to cure it in the future.
According to Time magazine, the rates of gonorrhea in cities where more people have the drug-resistant strains of the STD, the number of cases of the higher-resistant strain is, unsurprisingly, more prevalant than in other areas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report there were approximately 820,000 cases of gonorrhea treated in the United States each year. But despite the stronger strains, the nubmer of cases overall has decreased since the 1970s.
The stronger strains were first found in the United States, in Hawaii and California in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and became increasingly prevalent in the country throughout the 2000s. By late 2000s, the CDC adjusted treatment, no longer using ciprofloxacin or other fluroquinolones for treatment, leaving only one drug combination to treat it. That treatment is an injection of cephalosporin combined with either azithromycin or doxycycline orally.
The combination treatment, according to The Verge, may not be substantial enough to treat the increasingly stronger disease in the near future.
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