Fluoroquinolone antibiotics: new restrictions and precautions

[lynmynott]

The MHRA have published a new report on fluoroquinolone antibiotics that could affect a lot of people - gov.uk/drug-safety-update/f...

[shaws Administrator]

Thanks for posting lyn. My God, how awful it seems that some people have had truly awful experiences on this product and that there may be:- "disabling and potentially long-lasting or irreversible side effects" .

It's a bit late in the day if that wasn't discovered before passing as 'safe'.

[lynmynott Partner Thyroid UK in reply to shaws]

This worries me about all drugs. They don't know what the long lasting effects are for many drugs yet they are happy to prescribe them - unless it's liothyronine of course!

[seasider18 in reply to lynmynott]

I have searched Health Unlocked for a Forum on Fluoroquinolones or Cipro without success. It is a world wide problem that should have its own forum. Is there any means of asking for one to be created as they did on the Patient.info site when it had posts going on to many other groups as it does here.

[lynmynott Partner Thyroid UK in reply to seasider18]

I think they would only include this if there was a group willing to run it and I don't know of any groups I'm afraid.

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

I'm glad this has become "official".

I knew about this a few years ago, and had read about many people being "floxxed", law suits in the US, etc.

I have colonised pseudomonas infection in my lungs - pretty common in those of us with lung disease - and I was getting quite regular flare ups. Ciprofloxacin is the only antibiotic that pseudomonas is sensitive to. I'd had a couple of prescriptions of Ciprofloxacin from my GP but I'd still get flare ups from time to time. When I saw the lung consultant, I happened to have a flare up at the time. He precribed the higher dose of Cipro - GPs can only prescribe 250mg, consultants can prescribe 500mg dose - and I asked if it was OK to take it as I'd read about people having serious side effects. I was told that he'd not heard of that and it was fine to take.

I had a one week course, infection didn't clear up, the course was repeated for a second week. Towards the end of the second week I was having side effects and felt very unwell, and I started making plans with my son what to do if I died (seriously!). I got an urgent appointment with my GP, told him what I was experiencing and he told me to stop taking it immediately. By that time I only had one tablet left anyway. He said I mustn't take it again and has marked my records to this effect.

I told the consultant at my next appointment who said he was surprised as he'd not heard of anyone reacting before.

Let's hope that doctors keep up to date with this sort of information.

[seasider18 in reply to SeasideSusie]

All doctors in the US and UK have been leafleted on the drugs in the past two years. Here the patient information sheet with the drug has been modified to a degree. Miram who spoke at the EMA hearing was invited to see MHRA to discuss the wording but they were reluctant to go the whole way.

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

Oh yes, was onto reporting it straight away I'm wondering if they've actually had so many reports that they've had to do something about it. But when I read the lung forum, no-one else mentions they've had side effects, and many of them take it because so many have this colonised pseudomonas.

[Hidden in reply to SeasideSusie]

Read the 91 contributions from the Public Hearing :-

Public hearing on quinolone and fluoroquinolone medicines

25 June 2018

EMA/225564/2018 Corr.

ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/do...

Speaker 5. Miriam Knight, Quinolone Toxicity Support UK

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

It's a common bacteria found in water and soil, it can cause infection anywhere, eg skin. It can also cause chest infections although usually only in people with compromised immune sytems or long term lung conditions such as cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (I have the latter two). Pseudomonas aeruginosa (which is what us lung patients tend to get, because it likes moist places, but rarely affects healthy people) colonises in the lungs and is difficult to eradicate so it can flare up from time to time.