When you’re sick and prescribed a drug by your doctor to make you feel better you expect a positive result—specifically, to recover from the ailment you are fighting. However, some patients have found that levofloxacin (or Levaquin by its brand name) has been linked to a painful syndrome called fluoroquinolone toxicity.
Take Barbara Odanka. Four years ago, Odanka was diagnosed with a case of pneumonia that left her hospitalized. Her doctor prescribed her levofloxacin, a drug in the fluoroquinolone class used in the treatment of severe bacterial infections. Odanka claims that she was not informed that this class of drugs could lead to tendon, bone, cartilage and muscle damage as well as damage to the central nervous and cardiovascular systems.
Doctors have yet to pin down who could suffer from the side effects of this unsafe drug. Odanaka began feeling the beginning effects within 24 hours of taking the drug and she has been battling pains for the last four years.
Two drugs in the fluoroquinolone class, levofloxacin (named here) and ciprofloxacin, rank third and fifth respectively in the FDA’s annual list of top five serious adverse events report consistently. These drugs are still on the market because the reactions are unpredictable and scientists have yet to find alternatives for the difficult to beat bacterial infections they are used to treat.
Petitioning eventually led to the requirement that fluoroquinolones carry warnings about the risk of developing tendinitis and/or tendon rupture. However, one issue with this is while pharmacies are required to disclose medical warnings about prescriptions by FDA law, patients who are hospitalized are not guaranteed this same safeguard.
Moreover, there are numerous cases of doctors blindly prescribing antibiotics (even powerful fluoroquinolones) for illnesses where they are ineffective—i.e. flus, colds and viral infections.
Now, even the FDA is being accused of failing to disclose serious side effects of levofloxacin.