British man in world’s worst case of ‘super gonorrhoea’

A BRITISH man has caught the world’s worst recorded case of ‘super gonorrhoea’.

the unnamed man picked up the sexually-transmitted infection during a one-night stand with a woman while visiting south-East Asia.

But doctors trying to treat him found that the two types of antibiotic most commonly used for gonorrhoea failed to banish his superbug.

while cases of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea – known as ‘super gonorrhoea’ – have been growing in frequency for a few years, none have previously been resistant to both of the two most common types of drug.

now officials at Public Health England have issued an alert to other countries over fears that the disease might spread.

Antibiotic resistance is a growing global health crisis which has been cited as similar to terrorism in its threat to humanity. it is driven by overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to evolve to become immune.

Experts believe more than ten million patients a year could die from superbugs within a generation if the problem is not tackled.

the British man, who had a regular sexual partner in the UK, visited his GP earlier this year after developing symptoms around a month after his one-night stand.

it is unclear whether the woman he caught it from had super gonorrhoea herself or whether his disease had mutated into an antibiotic-resistant form.

Doctors tried to tackle the man’s condition using the recommended first-line combination of two antibiotics: azithromycin and ceftriaxone.

But traces of the infection were still found after the course of treatment, showing it was resistant to both drugs.

the man is now being treated by daily injections of another form of antibiotic, which is less commonly used.

Public health officials are monitoring him and his former UK partner, who tested negative for the disease. they have not revealed where they live.

they also asked doctors to send all suspected cases of drug-resistant gonorrhoea to a specialist PHE laboratory for testing.

Dr Gwenda Hughes, of PHE, said: ‘this is the first time a case has displayed such high- level resistance to both of these drugs and to most other commonly used antibiotics.

‘we are following up this case to ensure that the infection was effectively treated with other options and the risk of any onward transmission is minimised.’

the case follows repeated warnings about the rise of the superbug, which the who said last year was becoming ‘much harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat’.