Story highlights A man in England is infected with a form of the bacteria that is completely resistant to the first line of treatment 
 
 Gonorrhea has been a growing concern as the bacteria adapt 
 
 (CNN) Public Health England is investigating the case of a UK man infected with a multidrug-resistant form of gonorrhea. 
 
 The man attended sexual health services this year and was found to be infected with a form of the bacteria that is completely resistant to the first line of treatment used against it. 
 
 First-line treatment for gonorrhea is a combination of two antibiotics (azithromycin and ceftriaxone), and this is the first global report of an infection with high-level resistance to both drugs, according to Public Health England. 
 
 The man caught the sexually transmitted infection in Southeast Asia one month before his symptoms began, the case report states. 
 
 His infection is "is very resistant to the recommended first-line treatment," said Dr. Gwenda Hughes, consultant scientist and head of the sexually transmitted infection section at Public Health England. "This is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance to both of these drugs and to most other commonly used antibiotics." 
 
 Read More ||||| Gonorrhea Is Becoming Untreatable, U.N. Health Officials Warn 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption BSIP/UIG via Getty Images BSIP/UIG via Getty Images 
 
 We are running out of ways to treat gonorrhea, the World Health Organization announced today. 
 
 The U.N. health agency released new guidelines warning doctors that it no longer recommends an entire class of antibiotics, quinolones, because quinolone-resistant strains of the disease have emerged all over the world. 
 
 Instead, the health agency recommends using cephalosporins, another class of antibiotic. The new protocol replaces guidelines that had not been changed since 2003. 
 
 According to the WHO, 78 million people are infected with gonorrhea every year. 
 
 Worldwide, health officials are concerned that overuse of antibiotics for other infections, such as urinary tract infections, will lead to widespread, untreatable strains of gonorrhea. In 2011, a super-resistant strain showed up in Japan. 
 
 As NPR's Rob Stein has reported: 
 
 "Gonorrhea has been plaguing humanity for centuries. But ever since penicillin came along a dose of antibiotics would usually take care of the disease. "'Gonorrhea used to be susceptible to penicillin, ampicillin, tetracycline and doxycycline — very commonly used drugs,' said Jonathan Zenilman, who studies infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins. "But one by one, each of those antibiotics — and almost every new one that has come along since — eventually stopped working. One reason is that the bacterium that causes gonorrhea can mutate quickly to defend itself, Zenilman said. "'If this was a person, this person would be incredibly creative,' he said. 'The bug has an incredible ability to adapt and just develop new mechanisms of resisting the impact of these drugs.'" 
 
 The WHO shift to the new class of antibiotics will not fix that overall problem of bacterial creativity. In some countries, strains of gonorrhea are already resistant to the newly recommended class of drugs. 
 
 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned back in 2012 that one of two drugs in the class of antibiotics the WHO now recommends, cephalosporins, was in danger of becoming useless to treat gonorrhea, at least in the U.S, and recommended that doctors stop prescribing it. 
 
 Since then, the CDC's recommended treatment for gonorrhea has been a dual therapy, with the two antibiotics ceftriaxone and azithromycin, but an analysis in July warned that the bacteria could even become resistant to that combination. 
 
 As for when antibiotic options will run out altogether, Teodora Wi of the WHO's Department of Reproductive Health and Research tells the journal Science, "We will have to have new drugs in 5 years, I think." 
 
 The U.S. government is spending millions of dollars through the CDC and National Institutes of Health to develop new antibiotics and combat resistance. 
 
 The WHO also revised its guidelines for treating two other sexually transmitted infections, chlamydia and syphilis. Neither is facing severe antibiotic resistance. Syphilis, for example, can be treated with a single dose of penicillin, although there is a worldwide shortage of the drug. 
 
 Although all three sexually transmitted diseases affect both men and women, they can have particularly devastating effects on women if they are not treated. Gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and lead to dangerous ectopic pregnancies. Syphilis can pass from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and chlamydia can make it difficult for a woman to get pregnant. ||||| Some damn dirty disease via Wikimedia 
 
 Read: This Georgia Bro Was Detained After Spraying a Woman in the Face with 'Liquid Ass' 
 
 Bad news, rubber-less shaggers: There's a new strain of super gonorrhea afoot in Britain, and it's heading your way. 
 
 As it's evolved, this strain of the sexually transmitted disease informally known as "the clap" has become resistant to the drugs previously used to combat it. Following an outbreak of this super gonorrhea in the north of England at the end of last year, there are now fears it's spreading across the country, with cases popping up in the West Midlands and the South East, according to Public Health England (PHE). 
 
 While the term "super gonorrhea" might, at surface level, sound quite funny, there's a much darker side to this story. The drug-resistant STD is indicative of other bacterias becoming resistant to treatment—a problem that Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies says is as bad as the threat of terrorism. George Osborne also warns that antibiotic-resistant diseases could be the biggest killer in the world in 30 years. Gonorrhea can also damage the womb to the point of infertility, which is obviously very worrying when it comes to these increasingly untreatable strains. 
 
 The drugs used to treat the disease, a jab of ceftriaxone and a pill of azithromycin, are losing ground to the STD, with the former now the only one that still works. 
 
 Away from the whole super-strain news, the number of people in the UK diagnosed with gonorrhea has more than doubled in the past few years, making it second only to chlamydia as the top sex disease of choice. And it's not only the clap that's on the rise; reported cases of syphilis rose by 63 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to PHE. 
 
 This spike is supposedly down to the number of unprotected sexual encounters between heathens. So, moral of the story: If you don't want diseased genitalia—and you presumably don't—then wrap it up before you use it.
– Learning you have gonorrhea is bad; learning officials consider your case of gonorrhea the "worst ever" is something else entirely. The Press Association reports a man in the UK was diagnosed earlier this year with what is believed to be the first strain of gonorrhea to be resistant to the main antibiotic treatment. Public Health England says the man contracted this super-gonorrhea during a sexual encounter with a woman in Southeast Asia. His symptoms appeared about a month later, according to CNN. As is usual with gonorrhea, doctors attempted to treat it with the antibiotics azithromycin and ceftriaxone. Unusually, the antibiotics didn't work. "This is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance to both of these drugs and to most other commonly used antibiotics," Dr. Gwenda Hughes with PHE says. The World Health Organization and the European Centres for Disease Control agree that it's a global first, the BBC reports. The man's antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is a major concern for experts, who fear the STD becoming untreatable. "The bacteria that cause gonorrhea are particularly smart," Teodora Wi at WHO said last year. "Every time we use a new class of antibiotics to treat the infection, the bacteria evolve to resist them." Health officials are going back through the man's sexual history to keep the gonorrhea from spreading. So far no other cases have appeared, including in the man's regular female partner in the UK. Doctors are trying a final antibiotic on the man and will know if it worked next month.