What you need to know about the class of powerful antibiotics called fluoroquinolones:
In December, the federal agency announced that, in rare cases, the drugs have caused tears or ruptures in the heart, called aortic dissections, which can be fatal. Five months earlier, in July, the FDA updated the safety label of fluoroquinolones to include stronger warnings about mental health side effects like trouble paying attention, disorientation, and memory loss.
Crespo says fluoroquinolones effectively treat a variety of infections, including complicated urinary tract infections and bacterial infections of the prostate, stomach, and bacterial forms of pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Because they can be prescribed in pill form, he says, they can be given to patients with serious infections that might otherwise require a hospital stay for intravenous antibiotic treatment.
At the time, he was in excellent health, he says. He biked 7 to 10 miles a day and bench-pressed as much as 300 pounds. But not long after he finished his course of drugs, he started to feel weakness throughout his body and his endurance dropped significantly. After 9 months of vague and subtle symptoms, the muscles in his legs began to ache severely, and he sought treatment.
“At first it was an outlet for my frustration,” says Melvin, whose symptoms eventually led him to an early retirement. “I was unprepared for the amount of people contacting me daily.”Among those contacts were a handful of researchers interested in the effects of fluoroquinolones, some of whom had had their own experiences with the drugs. Together, they began to pursue a link between fluoroquinolones and the family of side effects that they seemed to trigger.
In its December warning, the FDA said certain conditions made people taking fluoroquinolones twice as likely to have an aortic dissection, or rupture. The agency advised against prescribing such antibiotics to the elderly as well as to people with high blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, or genetic conditions like Marfan syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
“They can kill hard-to-reach infections, but the collateral damage they cause is unacceptable,” Melvin says.
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