Scary News: Gonorrhea Could One Day Be Untreatable

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Researchers looked at more than 5,000 cases of gonorrhea and studied how they reacted to the standard drug treatments. Of those, more than 25 percent were resistant to tetracycline, nearly 20 percent to ciprofloxacin, and more than 16 percent to penicillin.

Gonorrhea is usually treated and cured with two antibiotics (azithromycin and ceftriaxone), but the CDC data found that 2.5 percent of the cultures they studied were resistant to azithromycin (up from 0.6 percent in 2013), and 0.8 percent were resistant to ceftriaxone (up from 0.4 percent in 2013).

Sure, there are other drug options out there for treatment—for now—but the news is alarming, to say the least, especially given how quickly certain strains are becoming resistant to particular antibiotics.

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While gonorrhea is usually a very treatable STD, if left untreated it can cause infertility and chronic pelvic pain. And the longer you wait to find a drug that will cure gonorrhea, the greater your risk of having serious complications from it.

RELATED: 8 Things You’ve Heard About STDs That Are Totally Bogus

The bottom line: Use condoms and practice safe sex. It’s really, really important.