A test made by UCLA researchers could pinpoint which individuals with gonorrhea will react successfully to the inexpensive oral antibiotic ciprofloxacin, which had formerly been sidelined over concerns the bacterium that causes the disease was becoming resistant to it.

In study published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, a UCLA-led team found that of 106 subjects the evaluation identified as having a strain of gonorrhea known as wild-type gyrA serine, all were cured with a single dose of oral ciprofloxacin.

Though the evaluation has been available for three years, this is actually the first time it has been systematically studied in humans.

<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>Gonorrhea is one of the most common drug-resistant infections worldwide and is becoming harder to treat. Current treatment methods require an antibiotic injection, which is expensive and painful.This new test could make it easier and safer to treat gonorrhea with different antibiotics, including one pill given by mouth."</em></span>Klausner, Adjunct Professor, Department of Epidemiology, University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

"Using a pill rather than a shooter would also make it easier and quicker to take care of sex partners of patients with gonorrhea," he added.

The ability of bacteria to alter over time in ways that limit or eliminate the effectiveness of drugs designed to kill them has created a global issue. Gonorrhea is particularly skilled in this regard and has developed increasing resistance to all recent antibiotics.
Due to the spread of multidrug-resistant gonorrhea, public health authorities have declared it one of the top five urgent dangers to public health.

Scientists have been trying to determine how to identify instances for targeted usage of ciprofloxacin treatment, reducing the need to utilize the injectable antibiotic ceftriaxone and lowering the risk of resistance to that drug. Gonorrhea's resistance speed to ceftriaxone is now less than 1%.

The DNA test the investigators developed detects a distinct genetic mutation from the gonorrhea bacterium which makes it resistant to ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is highly effective against infections with no mutation.

The investigators note that the findings have been limited by the comparatively small number of individuals studied and the fact that participation was confined to asymptomatic individuals.

Additionally, many people who were initially diagnosed with an wild-type strain during the test were subsequently found to be infected with additional breed types.

<a href="https://www.uclahealth.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: #000000; text-decoration: underline;">Source :</span></span><span style="color: #ff6600;">University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences</span></a>