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Mutant syphilis strain resistant to antibiotic pills (Globe and Mail, July 8th, 2004)

A fast-spreading mutant strain of syphilis has proved resistant to the antibiotic pills that are offered to some patients as an alternative to painful penicillin shots.

Since the late 1990s, doctors and public health clinics have been giving azithromycin to some syphilis patients because the long-acting antibiotic pill was highly effective and easy to use. Four pills taken at once were usually enough to cure syphilis.

But now researchers at University of Washington in Seattle have found at least 10 per cent of syphilis samples from patients at sexually transmitted disease clinics in four cities had a strain resistant to azithromycin.

”That suggests that this mutation is pretty widely distributed geographically,” said Sheila A. Lukehart, a research professor of infectious diseases.

The percentage of samples from San Francisco with the mutant strain jumped from 4 per cent in 1999-2002 to 37 per cent in 2003, with the increase taking place largely among gay or bisexual men with multiple partners.

It’s going to take a lot of government funding to figure out how to transfer this disease to Africa.