Fluoroquinolone: a Healer OR a Threat?
Antibiotics are certain drugs that fight against bacterial infections that threat human lives. Fluoroquinolones, having a fluorine in its chemical structure, are the “drugs of choice” for most of the severe bacterial infections like hospital-acquired pneumonia, urinary tract infections, minor pyelonephritis, minor bacterial prostitis and even plague or anthrax. Its ability to destroy gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria equally made it much more popular specially for multi-drug resistant bacterial infections. They include drugs sold under the names ciprofloxacin (Cipro), gemifloxacin (Factive), levofloxacin (Levaquin), moxifloxacin (Avelox), norfloxacin (Noroxin), and ofloxacin (Floxin). Patients either take them orally or through injection.
An observation by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), based on reports of patient problems and on studies between 2015-2018, unveiled that the fluoroquinolone antibiotics may cause the risk of aortic aneurysm, a condition where a bulge in artery can grow and burst ,causing a dangerous and fatal bleeding. Patients who are already suffering from high blood pressure, or who have already gone through myocardial infarction or have blockages of blood vessels or those who have Marfan Syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome are prone to acquire this side effect. According to Dr. Scott Gottleib, the Commissioner of FDA, though the risk of aortic aneurysm is low, the patients with aortic blockages previously have tendency of repeating the same and hence they must be provided the alternative treatment. For people,who don’t belong to this category, for them fluoroquinolone is still being a good option. Not only that, these drugs cause significant decrease in blood sugar level and negative impact on mental health. In 2016, it was revealed that they also affect the central nervous system, muscles, nerves and joints.
If one belongs to the risk categories, he (she) must immediately contact the physician without self medication or without stopping them by himself (herself).
Source: CNN Health
About Image and its credit: Model representation of Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm, credited to BruceBlaus, CC-BY-SA-4.0
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Fluoroquinolone: a Healer OR a Threat?
