A woman in her 20s in London and a heterosexual couple in their
20s based in the Midlands have recently been diagnosed with a
strain of N. gonorrhoeae with resistance to the antibiotic
ceftriaxone.
Ceftriaxone is the main antibiotic used to treat gonorrhoea in
the UK and being infected with a ceftriaxone resistant strain
means that this antibiotic will not easily treat the infection.
Follow-up tests are still awaited to see if treatment has been
successful in these 3 recent cases.
Further public health investigations are underway but there are
currently no known connections between the cases in London and
the Midlands.
Ceftriaxone resistance is most common in the Asia-Pacific region
and is occasionally detected in the UK in people who have visited
or who have moved to the UK from this region.
Dr Katy Sinka, STI Section Head
at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said:
After a couple of years without any cases of this hard to treat
form of gonorrhoea, we have now seen 4 cases in the last 2
months. It’s too soon to say whether this will be the start of a
longer-term trend, but we do know that STIs are on the
rise in general.
Getting an STI isn’t as simple
as taking some medicine and moving on with your life – if not
properly treated, they can have long term impacts on your and
your partner’s health. Adding antibiotic resistance into the mix
makes the impact on your life even greater.
There are simple steps you can take to reduce your risk of
gonorrhoea and other STIs. Use condoms
consistently and correctly with all new or casual partners, test
regularly for STIs and if you
have any symptoms such as unusual discharge, don’t have sex until
you are tested.
STI testing is free
and available through online self-sampling services or by
contacting local sexual health services. UKHSA actively monitors,
and acts on, the spread of antibiotic resistance in gonorrhoea
and potential treatment failures and, when ceftriaxone resistant
strains are identified, implements prompt public health action to
limit further spread.
Typical symptoms of gonorrhoea include a thick green or yellow
discharge from the vagina or penis, pain when urinating, pain and
discomfort in the rectum and, in women and other people with a
uterus or ovaries, lower abdominal pain and bleeding between
periods. However, often people infected with gonorrhoea will have
no symptoms, especially for infections in the throat, vagina or
rectum.
Treating gonorrhoea as soon as possible is very important as it
can lead to serious long-term health problems; in women and other
people with a uterus or ovaries, gonorrhoea can spread to the
reproductive organs and cause pelvic
inflammatory disease (PID).
PID can
lead to long-term pelvic pain, ectopic
pregnancy and infertility. In men
and other people with testes, it can cause a painful infection in
the testicles and prostate gland, which may lead to reduced
fertility in some cases.
You can read more about gonorrhoea on the NHS website.
