“It might reduce the prevalence a little bit and control the burden of disease in the community, but actually it makes things worse because the end product of a lot of screenings is we will build a lot of resistance,” the sexual health physician Associate Prof Jason Ong, the lead author of the study, told Guardian Australia. The researchers discovered that while endemic MG prevalence could go down from its current level of 9.1% to 6.4% if all men who have sex with men were offered screenings, it would lead to a high proportion of antibiotic-resistant MG.

In a research paper, published in March in journal EClinical Medicine, researchers built a mathematical model of MG transmission based on screening strategies and the prevalences of MG among men who have sex with men attending the Melbourne Sexual Health Clinic.