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Both the WHO and the CDC say it's time to "sound the alarm" on the increase in drug-resistant gonorrheaFirst, it was the Centers for Disease Control—now, the World Health Organization is warning that Gonorrhea could join herpes and HIV/AIDS as "uncurable" sexually-transmitted diseases. "We're sitting on the edge of a worldwide crisis," says Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, of WHO's department of reproductive health and research. "There's a general complacency around sexually transmitted infections in general, and this doesn't have the same political or social pressure as HIV. That's because gonorrhea has been so easily curable so far, but in the future, that...

CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - A group of drug-resistant microbes that infect the intestine have become much more common among hospitalized patients and in the general community over the last decade, a Spanish team of researchers report. The bacteria are called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are concerning because these microbes are resistant to drugs called cephalosporins, and most can evade other types of antibiotics too. Dr. Rafael Canton of Hospital Ramon y Cajal in Madrid presented his team's findings here at the 43rd annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The researchers compared more than 1200 stool samples...