Remember when gonorrhea was the “good” STD? The one which your progressive health teacher told you could “really mess up your life for a little while” but would “eventually clear up with medication” before gamely showing you how to pull a purple condom over a well-endowed banana for the third time that semester? Well those carefree days are over.
According to a warning by the World Health Organization, a new type of gonorrhea is rapidly taking over the world. The WHO refers to the new strain as both “super” and “mutant,” which makes it both more dangerous than previous forms of the disease and also closer than ever to being firmly associated with the Ninja Turtles. And there’s more: This horrible, terrible, no-good, awful, mutated strain of The Clap is untreatable.
From The New York Daily News:
Both of the current antibiotics used to treat gonorrhea — ceftriaxone and azithromycin — are becoming increasingly ineffective against the new strain.
“The bacteria evolve(d) to resist them,” said agency Medical Officer Dr. Teodora Wi.
U.S. authorities have had some success against gonorrhea by using both ceftriaxone and azithromycin — but it’s unclear how long such a regimen will deter the super gonorrhea.
Unclear how long is pretty damn terrifying when you learn that approximately 78 million people contract gonorrhea annually and that this, the most complicated strain of the illness so far, developed due to “mistreatment of gonorrhea bacteria left in the throat after oral sex.” (Suggesting that your health teachers may also have known what they were talking about when they handed out dental dams.)
Several new drugs are in development that will (hopefully) bring this new strain’s reign of terror to a swift and timely end. But they’ve still got time before they exit trials and enter the pharmacy and NYDN reports that researchers still don’t know if they’ll be equal to the task of handing the strain.
