By Sam Blanchard Health Reporter For Mailonline
Published: 23:30 BST, 2 May 2019 | Updated: 23:46 BST, 2 May 2019
View
comments
Scientists have discovered a new combination of drugs which could tackle super gonorrhoea.
A powerful strain of the STI has been caught by three people in the UK since it was discovered last year, and is proving difficult to treat.
Of two currently used antibiotics, the researchers kept one and swapped the other for one used for ear and eye infections, septicaemia and meningitis.
They found it works almost as well against gonorrhoea as the current front-line treatment, which the team said is 'beginning to fail'.
The bacteria which cause the STI gonorrhoea (pictured - a 3D illustration of Neisseria gonorrhoeae) are rapidly evolving to be able to survive antibiotics, therefore doctors are being urged to take more drastic lines of treatment to keep the infection under control
Researchers at the University of Birmingham trialled the new drug combination on 720 patients at 14 sexual health clinics in England.
The patients were infected with normal strains of gonorrhoea, with the researchers wanting to test how well the new drug combination treated it.
Usually, the common STI is treated with an injection of the antibiotics azithromycin and ceftriaxone.
But the new combination used azithromycin and gentamicin together instead.
'Our current antibiotic treatment for gonorrhoea is beginning to fail,' said lead researcher Professor Jonathan Ross.
'And experience with previous drugs strongly suggests that this could become a widespread problem.
'Our trial has found that gentamicin combined with azithromycin works almost as well as ceftriaxone with azithromycin for genital gonorrhoea, but did not clear throat or rectal gonorrhoea as effectively.
The British Association for Sexual Health and HIV
