"If you don't trust it, why are you..."
Posted on 04/12/2007 10:54:31 PM PDT by neverdem
The rates of drug-resistant gonorrhea in the United States have increased so greatly in the last five years that doctors should now treat the infection with a different class of antibiotics, the last line of defense for the sexually transmitted disease, officials said yesterday.
The percentage of drug-resistant gonorrhea cases among heterosexual men jumped, to 6.7 percent in 2006 compared with 0.6 percent in 2001, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Standard monitoring of gonorrhea cases is conducted among men who go to S.T.D. clinics. New data from such sites in 26 cities show that rates of drug-resistant gonorrhea among heterosexual men at the clinics last year reached 26 percent in Philadelphia and more than 20 percent in Honolulu and four areas in California, Long Beach, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.
Among gay men at the clinics, the rates of the bacterial infection jumped, to 38 percent in the first half of 2006 from 1.6 percent in 2001.
For 14 years, most cases of gonorrhea have been treated with a class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Now, officials at the center are urging doctors to prescribe drugs in the cephalosporin class.
No new antibiotics for gonorrhea are in the pipeline, officials of the centers told reporters by telephone.
“Now we are down to one class of drugs,” said Dr. Gail Bolan, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases at the California Department of Health Services. “That’s a very perilous situation to be in.”
Dr. Bolan is a spokeswoman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, a professional organization.
Health officials are also concerned about extremely drug-resistant...
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The centers do not plan a letter to doctors on the recommendations. They are relying on news reports and state and local health departments to spread the information.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Liberal cause and effect at work. . .
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ceftriaxone is what we’ve been taught all along...
"If you don't trust it, why are you..."
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