Scientific American examines worldwide spread of drug-resistant gonorrhea

Scientific American examines how strains of cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea have "been emerging in Japan, and moving east and west from there, for at least a decade." The magazine writes, "Rapid international travel allowed the resistance mutation to hopscotch the globe," noting antibiotic-resistant strains that have been identified in Sweden, England, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, and France. "'We can't go back to older antibiotics,' says Peter Leone, who is board chair of the National Coalition of STD Directors and medical director of North Carolina's STD prevention program. 'Once resistance emerges in gonorrhea, it is there for good. Cephalosporins are all we have left,'" he added, according to Scientific American. The magazine writes that efforts "to educate physicians and patients, to track resistant strains and to develop new treatments ... must be carefully targeted and well coordinated with one another," and concludes, "If not, truly untreatable gonorrhea, and its expensive, destructive consequences, could be the worldwide result" (McKenna, 5/4).