2023-08-12 22:10:00
An antibiotic developed decades ago, doxycycline, can be turned into a preventive pill. Taken after sex without a condom, the drug has been shown in clinical trials to significantly reduce the risk of infection with three diseases.
Doxycycline has been shown to be effective in three of the four clinical trials conducted (illustrative image).
KEYSTONE/ALESSANDRO DELLA BELLA
These are chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. The main US federal health agency, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is to publish new recommendations on the drug this summer.
“Innovation and creativity are important in public health, and we desperately need new tools,” CDC official Jonathan Mermin told AFP. The CDC’s recommendations will likely target only the groups most at risk: gay men or transgender women with previous infections.
Cases of these three bacterial infections have been increasing for a decade and reached 2.5 million in 2021 in the United States.
Antibiotic resistance
Doxycycline has been shown to be effective in three out of four clinical trials conducted. “We found a two-thirds reduction in sexually transmitted infections,” Annie Luetkemeyer, who led an American trial, told AFP.
The latter was carried out on 500 men having sex with other transgender men and women. Efficacy was found to be higher against chlamydia and syphilis (-80% infections) than for gonorrhea (-55%). Side effects were few.
But expanding access to doxycycline has also sparked concerns that antibiotic resistance could develop, especially for gonorrhea, whose bacteria mutate rapidly. Initial analyzes are however reassuring.
During the American clinical trial, the researchers compared samples of this bacterium from infections that occurred despite doxycycline treatment, with samples from the untreated group.
The rate of resistant bacteria was certainly higher for the treated group, but that could simply mean that the antibiotic is less effective against this resistant strain, not that it caused it, explained Connie Celum, co-leader of this work. .
More studies need to be done to understand the effect of doxycycline on other bacteria, for example in the nose or intestines.
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