Treatment of gonorrhoea with actinospectacin.

Since it first became available penicillin has been, and probably remains, the antibiotic of choice in the treatment of gonorrhoea. In recent years, however, the recognition of treatment failures due to less sensitive strains of N. gonorrhoeae (Medical Research Council Working Party Report, 1961) and the increasing risk of serious hypersensitivity reactions in patients given penicillin for a relatively benign infection, have encouraged venereologists to examine the value of other antibiotics in gonorrhoea. Streptomycin is no alternative because many strains of N. gonorrhoeae are now highly resistant and toxic reactions to this antibiotic, although not fatal, can be troublesome. Oral therapy finds no favour with the venereologist whose patients are ambulant and often cannot be relied upon to take pills as prescribed. An injectable tetracycline phosphate (Panmycin) was tried, but pain occurred at the injection site in a third of the patients and daily injection for 2 days was