Miriam van Staveren went on holiday to the Canary Islands and caught an infection. Her ear and sinuses throbbed, so she went to see the resort doctor, who prescribed a six-day course of the popular antibiotic levofloxacin.
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[Three weeks later,] she developed shooting pains in her legs and feet, as well as fatigue and depression. “I got sicker and sicker,” she says.
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[F]or a small percentage of people, fluoroquinolones have developed a bad reputation.
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For decades, regulatory agencies and the medical profession were sceptical that a brief course of antibiotics could have such a devastating, long-term impact. But after persistent campaigning by patient groups, attitudes began to change in 2008, when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the first of what would be a series of strong alerts about the side effects of fluoroquinolone drugs, including tendon rupture and irreversible nerve damage.
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[F]luoroquinolones are damaging mitochondria, the power packs inside human cells that evolved from symbiotic, bacteria-like cells billions of years ago. This kind of harm can affect every cell in the body, explaining why a wide range of symptoms can appear and get worse over time.
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“I want doctors to be informed about the risks, no matter how rare or not they are,” van Staveren says. “I want warnings all over and I want the warnings to be taken seriously.”
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