Anti-Biotic Resistant Gonorrhea: CDC Says Just One Drug Left

Well, that didn’t take long.

Exactly 6 months after warning, in a major medical journal, that gonorrhea was becoming untreatable by the last two drugs commonly used against it, the Centers for Disease Control has taken one of those drugs off the table, leaving just one antibiotic available to treat the disease.

In a bulletin published today, the public health agency says that data from the national Gonococcal Isolate Surveillance Project shows a high enough percentage of resistance to the oral cephalosporin cefixime that “CDC no longer recommends cefixime at any dose as a first-line regimen for treatment of gonococcal infections.” Instead, it says, physicians should administer a single dose of injectable ceftriaxone, accompanied by some additional oral drugs.

This has been coming for a while, but it is still unnerving news. It means that the entire structure of sexually transmitted disease control in the United States — single doses of drugs given in single outpatient-clinic visits — now hangs on this one remaining drug. If ceftriaxone also becomes ineffective, then STD treatment will instead become a matter of giving drugs by IV: slower, more complicated, more expensive, and likely more difficult to access.

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But that’s nothing compared to what might happen if resistance in gonorrhea gets worse, and the remaining drug becomes not usable. In a statement also released today, the National Coalition of STD Directors (whose members run state STD programs) said: