Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 23, 1990 TAG: 9005230634
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: CHARLES HITE MEDICAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Health officials are alerting hospital-based and private physicians that the resistant strain of gonorrhea has been in the city for more than a year.
Doctors are being urged to run laboratory tests to determine whether a patient has the resistant strain of the highly contagious, sexually transmitted disease. Other, more expensive antibiotics can be used to treat this type of gonorrhea, health officials say.
"This is something we just didn't see in Roanoke until April of last year," said Susan Ostaseski, a nurse who heads the health department's sexually transmitted disease clinic.
Since that time, 62 of the 328 cases of gonorrhea seen at the clinic have been resistant to the usual treatment of ampicilin or amoxycillin, antibiotics similar to penicillin.
The clinic has treated some patients with the resistant strain who had been given the traditional antibiotic therapy, Ostaseski said.
"With the trend we're seeing to the resistant gonorrhea, it's important health care providers consider alternative treatments," she said.
The danger in using the standard treatment with resistant gonorrhea, Ostaseski said, is that it could alleviate the symptoms of the disease but not the infection. That allows the victim to continue to spread the disease.
Nationally, more than one million men and women contract gonorrhea each year. In Roanoke, most patients are teen-agers and young adults.
Symptoms usually appear two to 10 days after sex with an infected partner and include burning during urination and discharge from the penis or vagina. Advanced symptoms include bleeding between menstrual periods, fever, pain in the pelvic area and swollen joints.
In the early stages of the disease, many people have no symptoms.
If left untreated, gonorrhea can have serious complications. In men, the infection can spread from mucous membranes into deep tissues such as the bladder and prostate gland. In some cases sterility may result.
In women, a chronic infection may spread to the womb, Fallopian tubes and ovaries, causing sterility. A pregnant woman with untreated gonorrhea may infect her baby during delivery.
Persons who suspect they have gonorrhea or any other venereal disease can get free and confidential treatment at one of the three sexually transmitted disease clinics offered each week at the health department: Mondays from 4 to 6 p.m., Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m and Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m.
City health officials continue to be worried about a growing number of syphilis cases.
So far this year, the health department clinic has seen 43 people with the disease, compared with 26 this time last year. In 1987, the city had only one case.
The rise in syphilis cases could lead to more cases of AIDS, said Martha Lees, investigator of sexually transmitted diseases for the health department.
The AIDS virus is more easily spread when the genital sores that come with syphilis are present, Lees said.
by CNB