Mycoplasma genitalium: the new drug-resistant super bacterium causing infertility is scary

A tiny little bacterium worries about becoming the new drug-resistant super bacterium.

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Mycoplasma genitalium, which is a tiny little bacterium that risks being the new drug-resistant super bacterium. To warn is the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, which has published guidelines on how to best identify and treat this bacterium and how to best treat it.

It is a type of bacterium that can cause problems with sexual dysfunction, infertility and sexually transmitted diseases, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and trichomoniasis. It is therefore transmitted through sexual intercourse, but also only through rubbing.

In men, the Mycoplasma (MG or Mgen) can cause inflammation of the urethra, which leads to severe burning when urinating, while in women the bacterium is linked to inflammation of the cervix and pelvic inflammatory disease, an infection of the female reproductive organs that can lead to pain in the lower abdomen and pain or bleeding during intercourse. In severe cases, pelvic inflammatory disease can lead to infertility.

Often the colonization of Mycoplasma is asymptomatic, but it can happen that it manifests itself with an important morbidity in both men and women.

Scientists have known this bacterium since the 80s, but now fear the risk that it may transform into a super bacterium within ten years, because it has shown particular resistance to antibiotic therapies.

This is why researchers from the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) have published new guidelines for the prevention and treatment of this infection, which currently affects 1 in 100 people and can now be treated with antibiotics of the macrolide class.

Notably Paddy Hormer, co-author of the guidelines, recommends doing a specific test by il probiotics, in order to identify it correctly, and then make sure that the treatment has produced the cure of the infection:

“MG is treated with antibiotics, but since there was no commercially available test until recently, it was often misdiagnosed as Chlamydia and treated as such. This is not curing the infection and is causing antimicrobial resistance in patients with Mycoplasma Genitalium. If practices don't change and tests aren't used, MG has the potential to become a superbug within a decade, resistant to standard antibiotics. The biggest consequence of this is for women presenting with PID caused by MG, which would be very difficult to treat, increasing the risk of infertility. "

“These new guidelines have been formulated because we cannot afford to continue to treat patients as in the past. This could lead to a public health emergency. Our guidelines recommend that patients with symptoms are correctly diagnosed using a thorough MG test, treated correctly, and then checked to make sure they are cured. Resources are urgently needed to ensure that diagnostic and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) tests are available for women with the condition at high risk of infertility. We ask the government directly to make these funds available to prevent a public health emergency waiting to occur and which is already spinning out of control “. Paddy Horner explains.

The risk of contagion occurs through a unprotected sexual intercourse: it goes without saying, therefore, that the use of condoms is the best prevention. Symptoms of MG do not always show up and therefore the infection is difficult to detect.

Also in this case, therefore, prevention, and in this case the use of condoms, can prove to be the winning strategy to prevent this type of bacterium from becoming more and more insensitive to the antibiotics that are currently used.