New publication! Comparing Strategies to Introduce Two New Antibiotics for Gonorrhea: A Modeling Study featuring authors: @mckline98.bsky.social, @kroster.bsky.social, @dhelekal.bsky.social, @rumpl-er.bsky.social, and @yhgrad.bsky.social. Read it here at bit.ly/3Z1Zplh
Madeleine Kline. Date and time: Tuesday, December 16th, 2025 at 10 am - 12 pm ET. Location: Harvard Chan - FXB 301. “From Spatial Spread to Sexual Networks: Leveraging Infectious Disease Epidemiology Tools to Monitor and Respond to Strep Throat and Gonorrhea”
Please join our department in wishing Madeleine Kline (@mckline98.bsky.social) the best on her dissertation defense today! 👏
🧪 #gonorrhoea #mustread today's news about 2 new drugs to treat #gonorrhoea
Thanks @kakape.bsky.social for opportunity to say, "The availability of two new drugs will lead to an important and likely controversial debate about how best to use them"
And to @yhgrad.bsky.social @gardp.bsky.social
🧪 #Zoliflodacin a truly new #antibiotic just for #gonorrhoea
Maybe even more important is the controversial debate about how best to use it
We work with UZH, @yhgrad.bsky.social and @gardp.bsky.social to model the best strategies in 🇿🇦
@ispm.unibe.ch @unibe.ch
www.science.org/content/arti...
New article by Natalie Baker and colleagues:
"Evaluating the impact of a longitudinal, integrated climate change, health, and environment curriculum in undergraduate medical training at Harvard Medical School"
journals.plos.org/climate/arti...
@gaurabbasu.bsky.social @mckline98.bsky.social
In April, we congratulated IID’s Madeleine Kline (“Maddy”) on achieving the Emerging Physician Leader Award and Scholarship from Health Care Without Harm. 👏Learn more about the award and this year’s inspiring recipients here:
🔗 us.noharm.org/initiatives/....
(@mckline98.bsky.social)
Your point about higher starting prevalence settings is also excellent — and an area of ongoing work in the lab!
However, this would effectively mean there is a higher “resistance emergence” probability to those drugs, which we did test in our sensitivity analysis. Our framework could be easily adapted to more specifically look at bystander selection via something like an importation rate parameter.
Thanks so much! It’s true that bystander selection through antibiotic usage for non-gonorrhea infections could occur (especially for ceftriaxone and gepotidacin), and this is not explicitly modeled here.
Our results indicate that distributing selective pressures across the population minimizes the emergence of drug resistance in gonorrhea in US MSM and underscore the importance of disease and context-specific decision-making. [10/10]
It was possible to find combinations of parameters where equal allocation was worse than sequential, but these were rare edge cases that required a combination of unlikely events. Even then, the difference between strategies was not large [9/10]
Equal allocation was still better when we changed the prevalence threshold from 5% to 1% or 10%, and across a wide range of parameter values for parameters that determine underlying model behavior [8/10]
The sequential strategy had met the 5% resistance prevalence threshold i) for each drug individually and ii) for all 3 drugs in at least as many simulations and iii) for at least as many drugs on average compared to the equal allocation strategy [7/10]
We looked at the proportion of simulations had reached 5% prevalence of resistance for each drug and found that the equal allocation strategy 🔴 was better than the sequential strategy 🔵 because: [6/10]
We compared two strategies: equal allocation 🔴, where all 3 drugs are used in random allocation but each individual gets treated with 1 drug, and sequential 🔵, where new drugs are only used once resistance prevalence for the previous drug has reached 5% [5/10]
Here, we used a stochastic compartmental gonorrhea transmission model of US MSM to test introduction strategies with two new available drugs and one currently used drug, aimed at capturing random emergence and extinction dynamics [4/10]
Antibiotic stewardship often urges us to reserve new antibiotics until they are absolutely needed, especially in hospital settings. Past research has shown that for gonorrhea treatment, distributing selective pressures by offering more treatment options at the same time reduces drug resistance[3/10]
There were > half a million notifications for gonorrhea in the US in 2023, and the bacteria that cause the infection have developed resistance to all antibiotics used to treat it. 2 new drugs, zoliflodacin and gepotidacin, had positive phase III trial results and will likely be approved soon [2/10]
⚠️ New preprint ⚠️: Two new antibiotics are likely coming for gonorrhea 💊. How should we deploy them in the US to minimize drug resistance? @kroster.bsky.social @dhelekal.bsky.social Eva Rumpler @yhgrad.bsky.social [1/10]
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Our results indicate that distributing selective pressures across the population minimizes the emergence of drug resistance in gonorrhea in US MSM and underscore the importance of disease and context-specific decision-making. [10/10]
It was possible to find combinations of parameters where equal allocation was worse than sequential, but these were rare edge cases that required a combination of unlikely events. Even then, the difference between strategies was not large [9/10]
We looked at the proportion of simulations had reached 5% prevalence of resistance for each drug and found that the equal allocation strategy 🔴 was better than the sequential strategy 🔵 because: [6/10]
We compared two strategies: equal allocation 🔴, where all 3 drugs are used in random allocation but each individual gets treated with 1 drug, and sequential 🔵, where new drugs are only used once resistance prevalence for the previous drug has reached 5% [5/10]
Here, we used a stochastic compartmental gonorrhea transmission model of US MSM to test introduction strategies with two new available drugs and one currently used drug, aimed at capturing random emergence and extinction dynamics [4/10]
Antibiotic stewardship often urges us to reserve new antibiotics until they are absolutely needed, especially in hospital settings. Past research has shown that for gonorrhea treatment, distributing selective pressures by offering more treatment options at the same time reduces drug resistance[3/10]
There were over 1/2 a million notifications for gonorrhea in the US in 2023, and the bacteria that cause the infection have developed resistance to all antibiotics used to treat it. 2 new drugs, zoliflodacin and gepotidacin, had positive phase III trial results and will likely be approved soon[2/10]
I'm a current Harvard graduate student and I found out today that I had my NSF GRFP terminated without notification. I was awarded this individual research fellowship before even choosing Harvard as my graduate school
New preprint. After years of increases, gonorrhea diagnosis rates dropped in the US in 2022 and 2023. While the news is promising, understanding WHY is key to sustaining progress.
dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/427...
With nearly all of Harvard Chan School’s direct federal grants terminated, we are relying on philanthropy to power our research and support our educational programs. Every gift, regardless of size, advances our vision of health, dignity, and justice for every human. Support our work: hsph.me/whygive
My ongoing request:
If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.
NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...
NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...
Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.
