Australian scientists have discovered how gonorrhoea evades the immune system, opening the way for new therapies to treat the increasingly antibiotic-resistant sexually transmitted infection.
Molecular biologists Dr Thomas Naderer and Dr Pankaj Deo at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute put immune cells and gonorrhoea-causing bacteria under the microscope and followed their every move for more than two days.
What they discovered was that the neisseria gonorrhoea bacteria generates "little packages" - known as vesicles - that over time cause the immune cells to die.
The vesicles just look like bacteria to the immune cells, which will try to destroy them. But instead of destroying them they accumulate within the immune cells in quite large numbers, explained Dr Naderer.
"Over time these immune cells lose their function to work properly and eventually they die, so we think that is one of the mechanisms of how the gonorrhoea-causing bacteria survives within our body," he said.
The scientists say if they can block the vesicles then they can keep the immune cells alive for much longer to kill the invading gonorrhoea bacteria.
Every year, more than 100 million people worldwide develop gonorrhoea, complications can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, an increased risk of HIV infections and infertility in both men and women.
There has been a 63 per cent rise in gonorrhoea in Australia over the past five years, and antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea is rapidly emerging.
Just this week the world's first confirmed case of multi-drug-resistant gonorrhoea was reported by public health officials in the UK.
Dr Naderer says new ways to treat gonorrhoea are needed "because we are running out of antibiotics".
Gonorrhoea is usually treated with a combination of antibiotics azithromycin and ceftriaxone.
A surveillance report released in February showed cases of antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea had trebled within six months in Australia.
"We are starting to think of different ways to treat these infections and perhaps boosting the immune system, bringing it back to its full function could be quite a powerful way," said Dr Naderer.
