Healthy Comment

FDA Watchlist Drug Two: Antibiotic

The second watch-listed medication that caught my attention are fluoroquinolones.
These are broad-spectrum antibiotics.
They are sold under brand names such as Cipro, Levaquin, and Floxin.

The current concern is over retinal detachment.
But that isn't the only eye-related secondary effect of the antibiotic.
Dim vision, double vision, cataracts, flashing lights, floaters.
Reversible blindness and irreversible blindness.
The laundry list of unwanted effects covers multiple body systems and is, indeed, long.

 

One interesting unwanted effect of flouroquinolone use is spontaneous tendon rupture.
Ruptures occurred hours to months after initiating treatment.
That must come as a shocking surprise. Especially when you are told (if you are told) that your antibiotic is to blame.

Four drugs within this class have been removed because of "unacceptably" high adverse reactions.

There have been class action suits.
There are consumer protection groups targeting these drugs.
What a nasty little mess they are.

I stand on the same position with fluoroquinolones as with other antibiotics.
Great tool for infection suppression/eradication. Great gift to mankind.
Misused, overused, and abused.

Traveling the Chilean countryside I asked my driver to stop at a pharmacia. The bad air in Santiago had taken its toll on me following the bad air on the Lan Chile flight from Kennedy.
I wanted a decongestant.
The pharmacist asked if I wanted an antibiotic as well.
No exam. Not even a single question about symptoms.
It was the common cold.
Any of 200+ strains of viruses.

And so our war on infection continues.
With us wasting our greatest weapons through sloth and ignorance.

Update:  Probiotic versus bowel infection.
It was just this kind of research some years ago that turned me toward interest in gut health.
One month reports came out about 14 deaths in UK hospitals from Clostridium infection-- later found to have been introduced by nurses dirty fingernails.
The next month several internists at a US hospital co-authored a paper on probiotics preventing Clostridium infection in a hospital setting.

The disconnect used to infuriate me.
Now I see it as sad/pathetic.