“Gonococcal resistance has been ongoing since the 1940s, starting with resistance to sulfanilamide. In the 1980s, tetracycline and penicillin were abandoned due to resistance, which led the CDC to recommend treatment with ciprofloxacin or other fluoroquinolones in 1987,” Dr. Wang said.
The future of treatment of drug-resistant gonorrhea is cloudy, P. Frederick Sparling, M.D., observed in his plenary lecture at the meeting.
“What drugs will replace ciprofloxacin and cefixime? Pharmaceuticals are abandoning such areas, as they are price-controlled markets, with government as the main buyer. The future of treating gonorrhea is bleak,” said Dr. Sparling, J. Herbert Bate Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology, Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Sparling added that the implications of emerging vaccines for STDs and attacks from conservative groups on research related to STDs both add to the difficulties in developing new drugs for gonorrhea.