Comments on: The Japanese are Giving Everybody Incurable Gonorrhea http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/ A Japanese Language & Culture Blog Sun, 13 Apr 2014 12:20:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.2 By: john http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-51031 Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:33:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-51031 not particularly true at all, silly person :)

]]> By: WhiteRice http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-49963 Sun, 04 Nov 2012 04:49:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-49963 I read about this in a medical magazine a few years back. It’s pretty scary how we don’t have any antibiotics that work on those bacteria anymore. Fret not, researchers are developing new ways to kill bacteria. But, I suppose it will take a while until there is a sure fire method.

]]> By: Moobly Booboo http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-49668 Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:43:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-49668 Well, it’s not that bad. You’d probably have less people running the doctor for every little sniffle, though if you sold over-the-counter drugs to treat cold symptoms that were vasoconstrictors instead of antihistamines mixed with sedatives. How about an article on where to get some decent cold meds? :(

]]> By: Tom http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-49627 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 22:49:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-49627 Hashi, I’m not trying to be mean here, but what do contraceptives have to do with gonorrhea? The only contraceptive that helps prevent against gonorrhea is one that the Japanese have plenty of access to – condoms. IUDs, pills, patches and so on cannot fight against STDs, and they were never meant to. As someone else stated, this form of gonorrhea (specifically H041 ceftriaxone-resistant gonorrhea. Microbio is one of the big things I studied when I was going into the medical field) most likely came about due to overmedication of antibiotics. This has happened all over the world. To truly explain everything, I need to step back a bit.

Gonorrhea is a bacterial STD and is quite common. I won’t go into symptoms, but we generally treat it with cephalosporin, which is an antibiotic that helps kill or prevent the growth of bacteria in the body. It’s used to treat staph, strep, tonsillitis, bronchitis, gonorrhea and a few others diseases.

The thing is, diseases have the ability to adapt. How does this occur? When we treat diseases, certain small strains can still remain in the body and begin to start the horizontal gene transfer process. These small amounts slowly multiply and increase over time, even after multiple treatments of certain drugs. This is called natural selection, and we got the term “superbug” from this very thing. We saw this with methicillin-resistant staph aka MRSA, oxacillin-resistant staph aka ORSA, glycopeptide-intermediate staph aka GISA, vancomycin-intermedia staph aka VISA (notice how staph is one hell of a resistant bug?) and so on. Most of these are actually associated with nosocomial infections, which are better known as hospital acquired infections.

So now, back to H041. The CDC has actually changed its policy on treating gonorrhea as a whole, and we can actually treat this with both ceftriaxone and azithromycin. You can read the CDC’s information regarding this here:

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/1/10-0397_article.htm

And you can see treatment updates, as well as the latest info on gonorrhea here:

http://www.cdc.gov/std/gonorrhea/arg/default.htm

Back to what I was referring to at the beginning. Aside from abstinence, the only effective contraceptive we have to help fight against STDs as a whole is a condom. IUDs, pills, patches, injections and so on are only used to prevent fertilization of the egg, although some people also use them to help control menstrual cycles. The first half of your article started out quite nicely, but it just seemed to take a bizarre turn after that. I know you were trying to explain the dichotomy between how the US is vs how Japan is, but I think a paragraph or two in there to help transition it would be beneficial for clarity regarding the matter. The way it currently reads, it seems like you believe all forms of contraception help prevent STDs. I could be totally off base about this, however, and again, I’m not trying to be mean or rude.

]]> By: Ken Seeroi http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-49430 Sun, 21 Oct 2012 08:19:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-49430 Agreed. There’s a huge amount of prostitution here, and condoms are considered optional. This disease has everything to do with Japan.

]]> By: Vivian Morelli http://www.tofugu.com/2012/10/19/the-japanese-are-giving-everybody-incurable-gonorrhea/comment-page-1/#comment-49412 Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:18:00 +0000 http://www.tofugu.com/?p=24656#comment-49412 “Other form of contraception”- Indeed. You mean, NO contraception at all, right. Japanese people just don’t use it much… sad fact.

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