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Antibiotic-resistant strain of super gonorrhea discovered: Austrian man infected

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Antibiotic-resistant strain of super gonorrhea discovered: Austrian man infected

A new strain of the bacterium responsible for gonorrhea that is extremely resistant to antibiotics has been discovered in an Austrian patient.

Credit: wikipedia

An Austrian man was hit by a “super gonorrhea“, Caused by a new strain of bacterium responsible, the Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The peculiarity of this form of the disease – that it is transmitted through sexual intercourse unprotected – resides inextreme resistance to antibiotics, considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be among the main threats to public health. Since the 1930s, gonorrhea has manifested characteristics of drug resistance; now the WHO considers Neisseria gonorrhoeae a high priority pathogen for which it is necessary to develop new antibiotics.

Describing the case of man and the new strain of the bacterium was an international research team led by scientists from the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety in Vienna, who collaborated with colleagues from the WHO Collaborating Center for gonorrhea and other sexually transmitted diseases of the University of Örebro (Sweden), of the Department of Urology of the LKH Hochsteiermark hospital and of the Institute for Global Health of University College London. The ordeal of the fifty-year-old Austrian began in April, after returning from Cambodia. The man had had sexual intercourse five days earlier without condom with a local prostitute. Upon returning home, she began to manifest the typical symptoms of gonorrhea, that is painful urination e leakage of urethral fluids (for this reason it is popularly called “drain”).

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The man was initially treated with a combination of antibiotics azithromycin e ceftriaxone, the therapy of choice for gonorrhea, however after two weeks, despite the resolution of the symptoms, the urethral samples subjected to PCR tests were still positive. From the sequencing of the bacterium it emerged that it was a new strain closely related to the lineage “OMS Q”, Found in a handful of cases recorded in the UK and Australia in 2018 with correlation to Southeast Asia. The strain is distinguished by its extreme resistance to azithromycin and resistance to ceftriaxone. Further tests found that the bacterium isolated in the Austrian patient was also resistant to other common antibiotics, namely cefixima, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin e Tetracycline. According to Dr Sonja Pleininger (who coordinated the study) and colleagues it is a strain of Neisseria gonorrhoeae that is largely drug resistant (XDR), which could trigger incurable diseases in the absence of new and effective antibiotics.

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Based on what emerged from the sensitivity tests to various antimicrobials, doctors decided to prescribe a new therapy to humans with amoxicillin e clavulanic acid (1 gram) twice a day for a week. The second healing test appears to have been successful, as the culture of the urethral sample was negative for the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The study authors stress the importance of prevention (use of condoms), early diagnosis and the availability of effective treatments to combat gonorrhea. The risk of the spread of highly resistant strains is significant and poses a serious threat to public health. Details on the new strain were reported in the research “Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Neisseria gonorrhoeae causing possible gonorrhoea treatment failure with ceftriaxone plus azithromycin in Austria, April 2022” published in the scientific journal Eurosurveillance.

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