Oct 8, 2026 04:19 PM
https://www.sciencealert.com/sexually-tr...o-medicine
INTRO: A gut pathogen that causes diarrhea and vomiting is morphing into a dangerous and difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infection (STI). In the United States, roughly 450,000 people acquire shigellosis each year, which can lead to dysentery.
Historically, this highly contagious bug has mostly been spread through contaminated food or water during travel, and among young children in day care. But since the turn of the century or so, Shigella bacteria have emerged as a sexually transmitted infection as well.
Shigella infections can make anyone sick, but they are now considered 'endemic' in some communities of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Several of the strains transmitted in these communities have grown resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Some are now superbugs, on the brink of becoming untreatable. A recent analysis from the US CDC found that among nearly 17,000 Shigella isolates, versions that were extensively drug-resistant (XDR) rose from 2011 to 2023.
In 2011, isolates that were resistant to five commonly used antibiotics made up 0 percent of the samples. By 2023, they made up 8.5 percent. The vast majority of these drug-resistant versions had infected adult men, many of whom had not traveled internationally in recent months.
Molecular biologist Shangxin Yang says hospital workers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are now seeing roughly one case of extensively drug-resistant Shigella a month. In 2022, by comparison, they saw just one case all year.
"It's almost like an explosion of this pathogen in the community," Yang told CIDRAP News at the University of Minnesota... (MORE - details)
INTRO: A gut pathogen that causes diarrhea and vomiting is morphing into a dangerous and difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infection (STI). In the United States, roughly 450,000 people acquire shigellosis each year, which can lead to dysentery.
Historically, this highly contagious bug has mostly been spread through contaminated food or water during travel, and among young children in day care. But since the turn of the century or so, Shigella bacteria have emerged as a sexually transmitted infection as well.
Shigella infections can make anyone sick, but they are now considered 'endemic' in some communities of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Several of the strains transmitted in these communities have grown resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Some are now superbugs, on the brink of becoming untreatable. A recent analysis from the US CDC found that among nearly 17,000 Shigella isolates, versions that were extensively drug-resistant (XDR) rose from 2011 to 2023.
In 2011, isolates that were resistant to five commonly used antibiotics made up 0 percent of the samples. By 2023, they made up 8.5 percent. The vast majority of these drug-resistant versions had infected adult men, many of whom had not traveled internationally in recent months.
Molecular biologist Shangxin Yang says hospital workers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are now seeing roughly one case of extensively drug-resistant Shigella a month. In 2022, by comparison, they saw just one case all year.
"It's almost like an explosion of this pathogen in the community," Yang told CIDRAP News at the University of Minnesota... (MORE - details)