Classification and therapy challenging in pencillin-resistant gonorrhea
Penicillinase-producing Neisseria gonorrhoeae from the Far East are more tetracycline-resistant, require different nutrients, and have a larger (and sometimes an additional) plasmid for β-lactamase synthesis than West African strains.
Thus, federal researchers suggest, there may be two types of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea, as distinct as the two regions from which this problem is believed to originate. As they try to characterize these strains at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, other investigators are studying antibiotics that might be effective if the gonococci continue to develop resistance to spectinomycin hydrochloride, the present second line of defense (JAMA MEDICAL NEWS 237:2586 [June 13] 1977).
Some of what is being learned on both fronts was reported at the 17th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in New York. And Peter L. Perine, MD, of the CDC's Venereal Disease Control Division, emphasized that, in
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