Gonorrhoea may become untreatable

Gonorrhoea is becoming more and more drug resistant, according to health experts.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) says we may be heading to a point when the disease is incurable unless new treatments can be found.

Doctors have been warned against using the first choice antibiotic, cefixime because laboratory tests show it is becoming increasingly less effective. For the past ten years it has been the most widely used drug to treat gonorrhea.

The HPA is now recommending the use of two antiobiotics, one is a pille and the other a jab.

HPA experts say that the sexually transmitted infection has been easy to treat for the last 70 years but the organism that causes the infection has an "unusual ability to adapt itself".

Professor Cathy Ison, a gonorrhoea expert at the HPA, says: "Our lab tests have shown a dramatic reduction in the sensitivity of the drug we were using as the main treatment for gonorrhoea. This presents the very real threat of untreatable gonorrhoea in the future.

"But this won't solve the problem, as history tells us that resistance to this therapy will develop too. In the absence of any new alternative treatments for when this happens, we will face a situation where gonorrhoea cannot be cured. This highlights the importance of practising safe sex, as, if the new antiobiotic treatments can't be found, this will be the only way of controlling this infection in the future."