Decrease in the incidence of tetracycline resistance in strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in the nineties

RESUMO

Antibiotic resistance determined by standard disc-diffusion method on GC agar with supplement B in 583 strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae encountered between 1991 and 1996 at the University Hospital of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, were analyzed. The level of penicillin resistance varied between 40 and 28 over the years. Tetracycline resistance fell from 44.2 in 1991 to 23.9 in 1996. Twenty-one per cent of the isolates were resistant simultaneously to both penicillin and tetracycline in 1991. The percentage of such strains decreased to 6.5 in 1996. Ceftriaxone was introduced as a first line drug in treatment of gonococcal infections in the late 1980s. The declining trend of tetracycline resistance may be due to a decrease in the usage of tetracycline in recent years