World health organization warns current treatments for gonorrhea may soon be ineffective

Gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, affects about 78 million people worldwide each year, and, while the condition is often easily treated now, that may not be the case for much longer, reports NPR.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization, or WHO, released a warning about the increasing appearances of strains that have grown resistant to a number of common antibiotics.

Among the increasingly ineffective antibiotics is the commonly used class called quinolones.

The WHO suggests antibiotic alternatives, such as gentamicin and spectinomycin but warns that they, too, will likely be rendered ineffective in about 5 years.

Much of the problem is the particular ingenuity the bacteria show when faced with survival challenges.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are working on developing treatments that diminish the strains' abilities to do so.

The WHO issued similar warnings about drugs used to tackle Syphilis and chlamydia, which, combined, affect more than 130 million people per year.