Medication advancements stalled by mutating gonorrhea cells

Healthcare officials have reported that developing new medications to treat people with gonorrhea has become increasingly difficult. This is because the bacterium that causes the disease is becoming resistant to antibiotics, according to the Health and Fitness Times.

Researchers have found that this pathogen is capable of easily mutating its cells, which enables it to fight off medicines better. If this issue continues to worsen, experts predict that more strains of the sexually transmitted disease (STD) could develop and become completely resistant to all drugs.

In fact, gonorrhea has been found to be resistant to penicillin, an antibiotic commonly used to cure many infectious diseases.

Catherine Ison, professor at the Health Protection Agency Center for Infections in London, stated that "penicillin had been utilized for quite a few years until eventually it was not effective any longer and a range of additional agents have been utilized ever since."

Despite efforts to raise awareness of the spread of this disease, healthcare experts report that the number of positive cases is still rising. Each year, an estimated 700,000 Americans contract the STD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ison added that "selecting a reliable antibiotic could end up being a difficult task simply because the organism which leads to gonorrhea is extremely adaptable and grows resistance to antibiotics extremely quickly."