WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - New data from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that drug-resistant gonorrhea is becoming more common around the world.
According to the WHO's monitoring program, resistance to the two main antibiotics used to treat gonorrhea - ceftriaxone and cefixime, has increased sharply from 2022 to 2024.
The data mainly come from 12 countries across five WHO regions, with 3,615 cases reported in 2024.
More than half of the reported cases in men came from countries in the WHO Western Pacific Region, mainly the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. The African Region accounted for 28 percent of cases, followed by South-East Asia (Thailand), the Eastern Mediterranean (Qatar), and the Americas (Brazil).
The median age of patients was 27. About 20 percent were men who have sex with men, and 42 percent had multiple sexual partners in the past month. Eight percent had recently taken antibiotics, and 19 percent had recently traveled.
The report revealed that resistance to ceftriaxone rose from 0.8 percent to 5 percent, whereas resistance to cefixime rose from 1.7 percent to 11 percent. Resistance to another antibiotic, azithromycin, also increased from 0.5 percent to 4 percent. Notably, the majority of gonorrhea samples tested were resistant to ciprofloxacin.
The report findings are worrying because ceftriaxone and cefixime are the last recommended treatments left, as gonorrhea has developed resistance to nearly every antibiotic used against it. However, two new drugs, zoliflodacin and gepotidacin, have shown promising results in trials and may offer new treatment options soon.
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