“Super” Gonorrhea Resistant to Treatment

Anyone who has ever taken a sex ed class has heard about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including the lowdown on how you can catch them, how to prevent them and how to treatment them. Information on STDs is important for anyone who is engaging or planning to engage in oral, anal or vaginal sex. And the issue of STDs, at least in one respect, has become a bit more serious.

The class of antibiotics that are used to treat gonorrhea are called cephalosporins, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the disease is showing a dramatic increase in resistance to this treatment. And just recently, a new strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to cephalosporins was identified, leaving doctors scrambling to find drugs to use against the bacteria.

Why is this significant? Because right now cephalosporins are the only treatment for gonorrhea, which means that gonorrhea could move from “treatable” to “untreatable.” This is just one more reason to add to the long list of reasons why everyone should practice safer sex by using latex condoms and dental dams during oral, anal or vaginal sex.

—Taylor McCabe, 18, Contributor