Health officials in the United States now no longer recommends antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, and levofloxacin) as a treatment for the sexually transmitted disease, which can leave both men and women infertile and put people at higher risk of getting the AIDS virus. According to a press statement issued on April 15, the recommended options for treating gonorrhoea - the second most commonly reported infectious disease in the US after chlamydia - are now limited to a single class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins.
Gonorrhoea has worked its way through decades of other treatment regimens, from sulfa drugs used in the 1930s and 1940s to penicillin, which was used from the 1940s until the mid-1980s. Today, the STD now among the ''superbugs'' resistant to common antibiotics leaving US health officials no other option but to recommend wider use of a different class of drugs to avert a public health crisis.
Experts also say that because many people don't have obvious symptoms, they can unknowingly spread it to others.
Between men, gonorrhoea is transmitted primarily through unprotected anal intercourse and giving/receiving oral sex. The rise in gonorrhoea rates among gay men indicates an increase in high-risk sexual behaviour.
"Gonorrhoea has now joined the list of other superbugs for which treatment options have become dangerously few," said Dr. Henry Masur, president of the Infectious Disease Society of America. "To make a bad problem even worse, we're also seeing a decline in the development of new antibiotics to treat these infections."
"That leaves us with a single class of highly effective antibiotics," said Dr. John Douglas Jr., director of the CDC's division of STD prevention. Other experts called the situation perilous.
"We are running out of options to treat this disease," added Douglas, who said there are "no new drugs for gonorrhoea in the drug development pipeline."
Previously, CDC recommended against fluoroquinolones to treat drug-resistant gonorrhoea among men who have sex with men and in certain states, including California and Hawaii where most of these cases were turning up.
According to a 2006 report by Aidsmap.com, gonorrhoea is found more frequently in the throat than any other site in gay men. It advised gay men to have regular throat swabs to check for infection with gonorrhoea after a study conducted in San Francisco found that 6% of gay men had the sexually transmitted infection in their throat, usually without any symptoms. The study, which is published in the November 15th edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases also found that the throat was the most common site for gonorrhoea infection in gay men and that younger age and a greater number of oral sex partners were significantly associated with gonorrhoea of the throat.