British man has ‘world’s worst’ super-gonorrhoea

A UK man has caught the world's "worst-ever" case of super-gonorrhoea.

He had a regular partner in the UK, but “picked up the superbug after a sexual encounter with a woman in South East Asia”, says the BBC.

Public Health England (PHE) said it was the first case of the sexually transmitted disease that could not be cured with first-choice antibiotics.

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The usual treatment for gonorrhoea “is a combination of the antibiotics azithromycin and ceftriaxone”, says The Times but Gwenda Hughes, of PHE, said that the man’s infection was “very resistant” to this.

A medical analysis of the case notes it is the “first global report” of the infection resisting both antibiotics

According to HuffPost, gonorrhoea “can lead to infertility if left untreated, or septicaemia in rare cases and is known to cause symptoms including unusual discharge from the sexual organ and inflammation”.

But of those infected, about one in ten heterosexual men and more than three-quarters of women and gay men, have no easily recognisable symptoms.

The fear is that this strain of the bug could eventually become untreatable by any antibiotic.

Health officials say they are treating the infected man with different drugs to see whether they are effective in getting rid of the virulent strain. They will know whether treatment has been successful in the next month.

Doctors “have long warned about resistance to antibiotics, which they say could spell the end of modern medicine”, says The Times.