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  • 2019-11-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Is a New STD Superbug Deadlier Than AIDS? (en)
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  • In November 2019, the website MyColumbusPower published an article claiming that a new STD superbug had the capacity to kill people within days and that health officials were worried that the incoming epidemic would be worse than AIDS: This article stirred up a considerable amount of concern on social media. However, this article was already several years old. Furthermore, the claim that there is an STD superbug that is worse than AIDs can be traced back to a single quote from a single doctor and has been disputed by other medical professionals. Archived pages from the Internet Wayback Machine show that while the date on this MyColumbusPower article currently reads Nov. 7, 2019, this article has actually been on the site since at least September 2014. Furthermore, the information contained within is based on a CNBC report that was originally published in April 2013. CNBC quoted Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, who was concerned about an antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhea called HO41 that had been discovered in a woman in Japan. The news outlet reported: While the above-quoted text did originate with a genuine news source, there are a few problems worth noting about this report. For one, as of this writing, six years after the CNBC article was originally published, there has not been an AIDS-level epidemic due to this gonorrhea strain. While health officials may have been concerned at the time, the claim that this strain was worse than AIDS has proved to be overstated. The CNBC article was also updated to note that there have been no treatment failures reported in the U.S.for gonorrhea treated with currently-recommended first-line regimens. Furthermore, although CNBC quoted a doctor of naturopathic medicine saying that this strain of gonorrhea could be worse than AIDS, other medical professionals weighed in at the time to dispute this classification. Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an attending physician in infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., told Live Science that this was not a fair comparison: Although this strain of gonorrhea has not proven to be worse than AIDS and has not spurred any sort of epidemic, antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhea are a real and serious problem. Health officials have developed several ways to treat gonorrhea, but this disease has adapted over the years and is now resistant to many of them. The CDC told us in an email that gonorrhea has developed resistance to most treatments over the years. As of this writing, however, the disease can still be treated with antibiotics: This video from the CDC explains how health officials are racing to find new drugs to treat gonorrhea as this disease becomes more resistant to antibiotics: Lastly, it should be noted that when this MyColumbusPower article was shared on social media it was accompanied by a misleading image: This is not an image of gonorrhea or an STD superbug. This image actually shows the back of a man with AIDS and syphilis. (en)
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