For patients with gonorrhea, a two-drug antibiotic punch is the usual recommended treatment, but new research found the sexually transmitted infection is less vulnerable to one of these drugs: azithromycin.
Because the bacteria causing gonorrhea are already resistant to penicillin, tetracycline and fluoroquinolones, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worry that the sexually transmitted infection may outsmart another antibiotic. Left untreated, gonorrhea can cause serious health problems, including pelvic inflammatory disease in women (which may lead to infertility) and a painful condition in the tubes attached to the testicles in men (which may lead to sterility).
