Assessment of Antibiotic Resistance and Efflux Pump Gene Expression in Neisseria Gonorrhoeae Isolates from South Africa by Quantitative Real-Time PCR and Regression Analysis.

Antimicrobial stewardship includes exploring options to conserve currently available drugs for gonorrhoea treatment. There is the potential to predict an isolate as either susceptible or nonsusceptible based on the mRNA expression level of specific candidate markers, to inform patient management. This real-time qPCR approach, with few targets, can be further investigated for use as a potentially cost-effective diagnostic tool to detect resistance.