Every year, there are about 820,000 cases of gonorrhea diagnosed in the U.S. And thanks to increasing antibiotic resistance, our ability to treat the sexually transmitted infection is becoming more and more difficult.

According to the CDC, rates of super-gonorrhea (called such not because it’s super awesome, but because it’s super resistant to treatment) are on the rise in a number of U.S. cities, including Denver, Honolulu, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

Penicillin and various tetracyclines are already ineffective against most of the prevalent strains. As the Verge informs us, ‘this means that today’s gonorrhea patient has very few treatment options left” for symptoms that may include ‘burning, swelling of the testicles, vaginal discharge and anal itching.”

And one of those few remaining treatment options, the antibiotic cephalosporin, is probably on its way out as well.

Here’s more from the Verge:

By analyzing long-term surveillance data for 17 US cities between 1991 and 2006, researchers were able to trace how gonorrhea became resistant to ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that lost its CDC recommendation in 2007 because studies demonstrated that 13.8 percent of patient samples were resistant to the drug.

The study’s results are alarming, but […]