People in the UK who suffer from recurring bladder infections may soon be treated with a new antibiotic that isn’t yet anywhere else in the world.
Experts are calling gepotidacin a massive step forwards in the fight against resistance to antibiotics.
This is because bugs have not yet had the chance to become resistant to its attacks.
It means gepotidacin will be able to fight aggressive urinary tract infections (UTIs) that aren’t responding to the current antibiotics that are available.
It comes as new research has found some patients are waiting up to 12 years for a chronic UTI infection diagnosis, according to the i paper.
Expert doctors and scientists who treat these infections have shared battles patients face to get diagnosed, which sees some of them suffer symptom for more than a decade.
If it gets approved, gepotidacin will be the first new class of antibiotics produced in around 40 years, reports the Mail.
And researchers believe the treatment could be effective for as long as half a century.
Up to 1.7 million people in Britain suffer chronice UTIs, which is when you get three or more infections a year.
Symptoms of UTIs include a burning feeling when you go to the toilet, feeling like you need to go when you have nothing in your bladder and needing the toilet more than usual.
There is a risk of developing sepsis, which causes around 50,000 deaths a year.
Older people can also develop a condition almost like dementia, called delirium if they have a UTI.
Gepotidacin will also be used to treat a number of other infections.
This includes the sexually transfmitted infection (STI) gonorrhoea, which is one of the most drug-resistant bacterial infections that currently exists worldwide.
British multinational pharmaceutical company GSK, the company behind the new antibiotic, is likely to get approval from the NHS within the next two years, experts say.
GSK is also hoping to apply for approval in the US by spring this year.
Gepotidacin works by breaking down microscopic parts of the bacteria’s DNA. Experts say this is what may enable it to be effective for over half a century.
The antibiotic has been in development stages for over ten years.
