“DOCTORS have expressed ‘huge concern” that super-gonorrhoea has spread widely across England, ‘ BBC News reports.
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Experts say that the strain of gonorrhoea in the current outbreak remains treatable by another antibiotic, ceftriaxone.
But the spread of this “super” sexually transmitted disease is further evidence of the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bugs.
A Health Protection Scotland (HPS) spokesperson said: “At HPS we continue to support and work in collaboration with colleagues in Public Health England, and the other Devolved Administrations, to minimise the risk of multidrug resistant bacteria to the population and will continue to monitor surveillance data to facilitate investigations”.
A powerful strain of the sexually transmitted superbug first seen in the north of England has been found in the West Midlands and the south-east, PHE said.
The superbug seems resistant to the treatment administered for traditional forms of gonorrhoea, and doctors are now concerned that it could soon become untreatable.
But what we really have to worry about is the repercussion of untreated (or untreatable) gonorrhoea; like many STD’s, leaving the disease untreated can eventually lead to infertility, blocked fallopian tubes and ectopic pregnancy (where pregnancy occurs on the outside of the uterus, causing the sufferer acute pain).
In 2012, David Fisman at the University of Toronto in Canada used epidemiological models to show that the only way to stop transmission of gonorrhoea in a population was to target treatment at people who change sex partners frequently, especially sex workers and men who have sex with men.
PHE are urging people to use condoms with new of casual partners to cut the risk of catching the disease. This new strain has spread from Leeds to patients in Macclesfield, Oldham and Scunthorpe.
“Nonetheless, we know that the bacterium that causes gonorrhoea can rapidly develop resistance to other antibiotics that are used for treatment, so we cannot afford to be complacent”.
At least 16 cases were first detected in northern England, including 12 in Leeds where the mutated strand was first recorded, Public Health England (PHE) said in September. “Public Health England has issued the warning over the bug, formally known as HL-AziR, which was first found in the north of England previous year”.
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But symptoms can include a thick green or yellow discharge from sexual organs, pain when urinating and bleeding between periods.
