For several years now, the core empirical treatment for gonorrhoea has been intramuscular ceftriaxone. This wasn’t always the case, but the resistance rates for both penicillin and ciprofloxacin have crept up to levels that meant using them as empirical antibiotics was no longer a satisfactory option.
N. gonorrhoeae is particularly vulnerable to antibiotic resistance, essentially because it has no hiding place.
There are not many viable options left after ceftriaxone, so we end up using ceftriaxone on everybody with gonorrhoea or suspected gonorrhoea. And as a result we are starting to see ceftriaxone resistance…
Selection pressure…
The solution of course is to avoid using ceftriaxone on every patient for empirical treatment of gonorrhoea.
And this is now becoming achievable with the release of a commercial rapid diagnostic PCR assay, ResistancePlus® GC ,that not only detects the presence of N. gonorrhoeae (using both OPA and PorA targets), but also looks for the mutation conferring ciprofloxacin resistance (GyrA S91 F).
In the patients who have ciprofloxacin susceptible gonorrhoea, this will allow oral ciprofloxacin to be prescribed in a timely fashion, thus allowing the selection pressure of ceftriaxone on N. gonorrhoeae to be reduced.
This is a great example of how good diagnostic stewardship can lead to good antimicrobial stewardship. Hopefully such advances in molecular diagnostics will prevent the rather ugly scenario of “untreatable gonorrhoea”
Michael