Super-resistant gonorrhea strain found in Japan

The emergence of a strain of gonorrhea that can thwart the last antibiotic effective in treating the common sexually transmitted disease was bound to happen, experts say. The new, super-resistant strain is called H041, and so far, only a handful of cases are known in Japan. But don't count on it staying that way. Experience has shown that once a resistant strain of gonorrhea appears, it steadily displaces those that can be killed with antibiotics. It happened in the 1970s and 1980s with penicillin and tetracycline and more recently with a class of drugs called fluoroquinolones, such as Cipro.