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Gonorrhea is becoming resistant to antibiotic treatment
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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The conclusions made by WHO representatives after analyzing information from 77 countries indicate that gonorrhea is gradually becoming resistant even to modern antimicrobial agents.
In some cases, the infection becomes difficult to treat or virtually incurable.
"The pathogen that causes gonorrhea has a high degree of adaptation. Any use of new antibacterial agents is a kind of testing, which entails the development of the next variant of resistance," says the representative of the World Health Organization, Theodora Wi.
The scientists' conclusions also include the fact that the gonorrheal pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae is resistant to first-generation antibiotics. Strains that are virtually "unkillable" by conventional antibiotic therapy are found in large numbers in developed countries. According to Professor Vi, such cases are just the beginning, gaining momentum. Many countries simply do not report the emergence of resistance to a particular infection, and it is not possible to analyze such information.
According to statistics from the World Health Organization, at least 78 million patients with gonococcal infection are recorded in the world each year. The pathogen of gonorrhea affects the digestive and reproductive systems, the upper respiratory tract.
Women suffer from gonococcal infection the most – the consequences of the disease can be both infertility and ectopic pregnancy. In addition, patients have a significantly increased risk of contracting HIV infection.
The high incidence of gonorrhea is associated with the practice of unprotected sex, with increasing travel to remote countries, as well as with insufficiently developed diagnostics and illiterate treatment in some countries of the world.
So how can the disease be cured today?
A special program was conducted, during which specialists recorded the resistance of gonorrhea to the effects of Ciprofloxacin (in 97% of cases, from 2009 to 2014).
According to other available information, over the past decade, resistance to Azithromycin has increased by more than 80%, as well as by almost 70% to broad-spectrum cephalosporin antibiotics (for example, Ceftriaxone or Cefixime).
At present, doctors in many countries use cephalosporin antibiotics to treat the disease. And this is despite the fact that more than 50 countries have registered a loss of sensitivity of the gonorrheal pathogen to such drugs. For several years now, Ceftriaxone and Cefixime have been stubbornly "giving up" their positions.
According to the latest recommendations of the World Health Organization, treatment of gonococcal disease should be carried out with two antibiotics at once - for example, Ceftriaxone in combination with Azithromycin.
Of course, the pharmaceutical industry is working hard to create new generations of antibacterial agents. But at the moment, all such drugs are undergoing the appropriate stages of clinical trials. When they are destined to get into the hands of practicing doctors is still unknown.
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