America’s ‘Year of Diarrhea’ Now Features a Sexually Transmissible Superbug
Sex between men may now be the most significant mode of Shigella transmission.
If the tagline for 2026 becomes the “Year of Diarrhea,” the latest news suggests the designation is distressingly well-earned.
After this summer’s Cyclospora outbreak turned iceberg lettuce into a gastrointestinal gamble, another intestinal troublemaker is making headlines, both because it is sexually transmissible and because of its resistance to five commonly used antibiotics.
News reports are now hitting the mainstream media indicating that extensively drug-resistant Shigella accounted for 8.5% of U.S. samples with resistance data in 2023, up from none in 2011–2015, adding shrinking treatment options to an already unpleasant public-health problem.
Extensively drug-resistant strains of Shigella, a gut bacterium long associated with day care outbreaks and travelers’ illness, made up 8.5% of U.S. samples with resistance data in 2023, up from none during 2011 through 2015, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
Doctors and researchers in the U.S. and Britain say sexual contact among gay and bisexual men is helping drive the spread, though the CDC’s own analysis did not measure sexual behavior.
The report, published in April in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, examined 16,788 Shigella samples with resistance data that were submitted to the CDC’s PulseNet surveillance network from 2011 through October 2023. The figures describe those samples, not all U.S. infections. Of those samples, 510, or 3%, were considered extensively drug-resistant, meaning resistant to five commonly used antibiotics: ampicillin, azithromycin, ceftriaxone, ciprofloxacin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. More than 84% of those cases occurred in 2022 and 2023.
Among the 492 patients with age and sex data, 86% were adult men, and the median age of all patients was 41. Of the 258 patients with hospitalization data, about 38% were hospitalized; no deaths were reported. Of 116 patients whose HIV status was known, 54, or nearly 47%, also had HIV. Among 205 patients with international travel information, 82% reported no recent trips abroad.
Sexually transmitted diarrhea is on the rise – and it's morphing into a drug-resistant superbug https://t.co/NeU6yagwt6 pic.twitter.com/9uvyeNK4eo
— New York Post (@nypost) October 8, 2026
Legal Insurrection readers should already be familiar with Shigella. It is a highly contagious group of bacteria that causes shigellosis (diarrhea that can be bloody, fever, and stomach cramps) and spreads when fecal contamination reaches the mouth, including through contaminated food or water and sexual contact.
In my January 2024 coverage of Portland’s outbreak, I highlighted warnings affecting people experiencing homelessness and men who have sex with men, while my March 2025 follow-up noted that most cases continued to occur among the homeless.
My April 2026 report, “From Streets to Bedrooms: How Shigella Spreads in America,” broadened the focus to inadequate sanitation, sexual transmission, and rising antibiotic resistance. The recent reports now making their way into the media indicate Legal Insurrection has been a bit ahead of the curve when covering this pathogen.
The growing prevalence of drug-resistant Shigella underscores a troubling erosion of public health barriers once taken for granted in developed nations during the “golden age” of medicine.
What was once a disease largely confined to regions with poor sanitation is now spreading through multiple channels in the U.S. and abroad, fueled by homelessness, inadequate hygiene, and sexual transmission.
As antibiotic resistance expands, so does the potential for Shigella to become far harder to treat, turning what was once a routine infection into a complex medical challenge.
What makes the recent news most disturbing is that a report this July shows that the jump in sexually transmitted cases has been substantial. In fact, sex between men may now be the most significant mode of Shigella transmission.
A study in July showed that the spread of the disease through sex grew 15% faster year-over-year between 2015 and 2020 compared to spread through travel, food or nursery outbreaks.
Emerging evidence suggests that sex may even be the major route of transmission now, but it’s hard to tell when it’s not asked about when patients show up for medical care.
Experts say many people don’t realize Shigella can spread through sex — and that lack of awareness may be fueling infections.
“Many men who have sex with men are unaware of the serious and increasing risk posed by sexually transmitted Shigella,” said Cambridge geneticist Kate Baker, a lead author on the July study.
Sexually transmitted diarrhea is spreading in the US and turning into a drug-resistant superbug https://t.co/r9l5jP09MC pic.twitter.com/CJ9A6mSWbJ
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 8, 2026
The Year of Diarrhea is shaping up to be more than an unfortunate punchline, as sanitation failures, high-risk transmission activities, and antibiotic resistance combine to revive a disease Americans once expected medicine had tamed.
Let us hope this is merely a grim 2026 trend and not an omen of a future in which preventable infections become routine again.
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Comments
So where was Talafreako?
Sodomites need a high profile fellow traveler to push for more research into the root causes. What’s Obama up to these days?
So again, we are back to gay sex being the primary mode of transmission of the latest disease that allegedly threatens the human race. This hype has been replayed all of my adult life. Probably the first time that Fauci hasn’t been involved. Or was he?
It’s an inherently unhealthy and unsanitary act. That ain’t “hype” by the way.
If this plays out like Monkeypox, the media will trumpet the growing number of cases in the gay community, then a story or two will come out about a young boy getting it, followed by the disease losing all media coverage before people can ask the uncomfortable question.
When I became a flight instructor they taught us about visual aids and I said oh my God you can get it just from watching now?😆
I must admit, I had to read that twice. Slowing down in my old age, I guess.
“Bedrooms in which men and women have slept smell only of women.
Bedrooms in which only men have slept smell of socks.”
–Alex Kirs (adapted)
Got that, NIH? It’s in the socks.
Scatological fixation dies hard in the US.
Reap what you sow
I think diarrhea is a symptom of “the flu” – you know – like the recent illness that kept that Texas DEMOcrat Tallirico nut out of action for nearly two weeks! Must have been a rough case of “the flu”! Not saying it has anything to do with the subject of this article – just concern for the nut’s “wellbeing”!