{"id":109087,"date":"2018-04-16T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=109087"},"modified":"2018-04-09T11:28:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T10:28:47","slug":"super-gonorrhea-raises-the-stakes-in-the-war-against-superbugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/04\/super-gonorrhea-raises-the-stakes-in-the-war-against-superbugs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Super Gonorrhea\u2019 Raises the Stakes in the War against Superbugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Antibiotic resistance is not new but recent developments increase the urgency for action. Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

5 Apr 2018 – <\/em>There has been a lot of news over the past few weeks about the rise of superbugs and antibiotic overuse, including a nasty sexually transmitted infection<\/a> in the United Kingdom. A British man is the first in the world to be diagnosed with a strain of gonorrhoea resistant to all strains of antibiotics used to treat the infection.<\/p>\n

Superbugs have tended to pose the greatest risk to people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients, and those who were injured or underwent surgery. But the sexual transmission of these bugs means antibiotic resistant infections can spread much more widely.<\/p>\n

So what exactly are superbugs, and how scared should we be?<\/p>\n

Super but not new<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSuperbugs\u201d aren\u2019t the bug equivalent of superheroes. The term describes bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. How \u201csuper\u201d they are depends on how many antibiotics they have become resistant to.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntibiotic resistance\u201d and \u201cdrug-resistant infections\u201d also refer to the same phenomena. They describe microorganisms that have evolved to become impervious to being killed by treatment with antibiotics.<\/p>\n

There is a common misconception that antibiotic resistance means your body has become resistant to antibiotics. This is not true.<\/p>\n

Antibiotic resistance is nothing new. Alexander Fleming\u2019s 1945 Nobel Prize acceptance speech for the discovery of penicillin<\/a> discusses the development of resistance. He includes a scenario of Patient X, who:<\/p>\n

buys some penicillin and gives himself, not enough to kill the streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife. Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin the treatment fails.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, resistance has been reported for every<\/em> antibiotic ever introduced \u2013 generally within a few years<\/a> of deployment.<\/p>\n

How do they become resistant?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bacteria are able to fight antibiotics by a variety of methods:<\/p>\n