Gonorrhoea drug resistance fears

According to the BBC there fears over emerging strains of drug-resistant gonorrhoea in England and Wales. Tests on samples infection have shown high levels of resistance to a commonly used antibiotic called azithromycin. Azithromycin is supposed to be a fall-back drug if the standard ones stop working against the infection..

The Health Protection Agency first spotted six cases in 2007 which were resistant to azithromycin - five from Liverpool and one from Cardiff. Further analysis has shown there has been a general trend towards antibiotic resistance in recent years, which means treatment will very likely not work, even if the dose is increased.

The researchers said resistance could have occurred because the drug was being used against official advice. Another potential source of resistance is that low doses of the antibiotic are commonly given for chlamydia. Some of those patients are likely to also have undiagnosed gonorrhoea, which would not be fully treated, paving the way for resistance to develop.

Study leader Dr Stephanie Chisholm, said antibiotic resistance is able to develop very easily in the organism that causes gonorrhoea it is already resistant ciprofloxacin, tetracycline and penicillin. She stated that if high-level resistance to azithromycin spreads further, then there is less treatment option available for the future.

In a related development a spokesman for the Worshipful Company of Barber Surgeons stated that if the disease becomes untreatable then it would “swing back into action”.
“We have been concerned at the spread of antibiotic resistance in a range of infections, Many of these conditions are outside the scope of the Worshipful Company but we have considerable experience in treating the diseases of Venus”

“Members of the Company were treating the disease when Mother Clap was still running her Molly House on Field Lane. In fact we still have considerable stocks of Lunar Caustic in our stores. In addition we can offer a course of mercury injections into the urinary meatus which will, if nothing else, make the sufferer think twice about unsafe sex in the future! “

“If all else then fails our chaplains will intercede with St George the patron saint for this condition”

The Department of Health declined to comment on the Barber Surgeon’s offer

Mediaeval poison pen lettering

The Discovery Channel website has this article which concludes that Mediaeval monks who wrote Biblical texts Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been poisoned by the inks they were using. Cinnabar an ore of Mercury, was used to make red ink. A study (which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science) also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions.

Scientists believe the monks, who were buried in the cloister walk of the Cistercian Abbey at Øm, were either contaminated while preparing and administering medicines, or while writing the artistic letters of incunabula, or pre-1500 A.D. books. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a University of Southern Denmark scientist at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, suspects that ink used in the abbey's scriptorium was the culprit. "it is very human to lick the brush, if one wants to make a fine line. Even today "one should really not touch, or much less rub, the parchment pages of an incunabulum," he said adding that mercury "was used in the first place because cinnabar (a type of mercury) has this bright red, beautiful colour.” It is also known that metallic liquid mercury was given in vapor form to diseased patients. So if the monks "were just a little careless, they would be exposed this way, however, they might also be exposed during the preparation of the medicine."

Co-author Jesper Lier Boldsen discovered the previously undocumented disease FOS while examining the skeletons."We do not know if FOS was fatal, but it certainly looks painful and just as severe as leprosy," Lund Rasmussen said.

While working on the study, the researchers also noted that, due to different carbon signatures, some of the medieval individuals ate a mostly marine, fish-filled diet. Lund Rasmussen suggests that the others may have "preferred beer and meat, rather than fish and water." The Cistercians were, in principal, not allowed to eat meat from any four-footed animals, but the Franciscans do not appear to have always observed this practice. Although seafood may now contain high levels of mercury from environmental pollution, exposure from food would have been unlikely during the mediaeval period.

Lund Rasmussen and his team radiocarbon dated some of the studied bones, but they hope to do this for even more individuals from the test sample group, as this could reveal additional information about the possible link between mercury exposure and red ink use. By 1536, books were no longer written by hand, but were instead printed, so the scientists suspect the toxic red ink literally faded from the monastic picture.

The idea that the monks may have poisoned themselves while licking their brushes is quite plausible. One only has to look at the Radium Girls – women who painted dials of luminous watches. They would make a mixture of glue, water and radium powder into a glowing greenish-white paint, then apply it to the dials with a camel hair brush.. After a few strokes, the brushes would lose their shape, and the women couldn't paint accurately. They were isnstructed to point the brushes with their lips. Needless to say they suffered from radium poisoning leading in many cases to cancers of the upper and lower jaws.