Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is caused by the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae. And though it may cause no symptoms in many people who contract it, it can lead to long-term complications like infertility without prompt treatment. And that’s getting harder to do.
In 2018, UK health officials alerted the world that they had found the first known case of gonorrhea heavily resistant to the two frontline drugs used to treat it—an event that many experts had been expecting to happen. We’ve since seen similar cases reported, including another one from the UK in December.
Though gonorrhea is rarely life-threatening, it may be one of the first infections to become widely pan-resistant, a term for infections that are simply untreatable with the drugs we have available. Not all hope is lost, of course. There could be a vaccine for gonorrhea in the near-future, along with newer treatments to replace the ones that have lost their potency. But this more optimistic future isn’t guaranteed.
