
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and Antimicrobial Resistance
How superbugs make STIs more dangerous
May 10, 2022
Created With SupportDeborah D. Gordon has spent her career trying to level the playing field for health care consumers. She is author of "The Health Care Consumer's Manifesto: How to Get the Most for Your Money" (Praeger 2020), based on consumer research she conducted as a senior fellow in the Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Deb previously spent more than two decades in health care leadership roles, including Chief Marketing Officer for a Massachusetts health plan and CEO of a health technology company. Deb is an Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, and a Boston Business Journal 40-under-40 honoree. Her contributions have appeared in JAMA Network Open, the Harvard Business Review blog, USA Today, RealClear Politics, The Hill, and Managed Care Magazine. She earned a BA in bioethics from Brown University, and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.
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How superbugs make STIs more dangerous
Medically reviewed by Dr. Tom Sandora
What is antimicrobial resistance (AMR)?
Microbes are tiny germs, like bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, that can cause infections.
When medicines that treat these infections are overused or misused, the medicines can stop working — and that is called antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
When several drugs stop working on the same microbes, those microbes turn into superbugs.
AMR makes it harder to treat infections. When life-saving treatments stop working, infections get a lot more dangerous.
Sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates
According to the CDC, 1 in 5 people in the United States have an STI.
In 2018, there were 68 million STI cases in the United States.
Rates of STIs are on the rise, breaking records for six years in a row between 2014 and 2019.
Worldwide STI infections
STI rates vary by race and ethnicity. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, infection rates were:
STI rates vary by socioeconomic status. People with lower incomes have higher rates of STIs. This might be because those groups have less access to healthcare and health insurance.
Treating STIs
Some STIs are caused by bacteria, and others are caused by viruses.
Bacterial STIs can be treated with antibiotics, and viral STIs can be treated with antiviral medication.
STIs that can be treated with antibiotics include:
STIs that can be treated with antivirals include:
Gonorrhea has developed resistance to all but one class of antibiotics. Resistant chlamydia and syphilis also exist but are less common.
How AMR makes it harder to treat STIs
AMR makes STIs harder to treat. Common medications that used to work no longer do. As resistant strains of these infections spread, diseases like gonorrhea are becoming threats worldwide, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization.
How to slow the spread of resistant STIs
This resource was created with support from Pfizer Inc.