Stomach-turning sexually transmitted infection is on the rise — and standard medicines are failing

A highly contagious gut infection that can spread during sex is becoming harder to treat as antibiotic-resistant strains become more common.

An April report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked nearly 17,000 Shigella samples, which causes Shigellosis, which and can bring on diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps, collected between 2011 and 2023. In 2023, 8.5% of Shigella samples with resistance data were classified as extensively drug-resistant, or XDR — resistant to all five antibiotics in the CDC’s definition ...