According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Frederick W. Fraunfelder and Dr. Frederick T. Fraunfelder of the Casey Eye Care Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland decided to investigate the possible link between antibiotics and double vision after hearing so many reports of eye problems connected to the drugs. They began collecting all the reports of eye problems associated with the use of antibiotics published since 1986 and found some clear links between double vision (a condition know as diplopia in medicine) and fluoroquinolones.

Of the 171 reports of double vision the doctors found, 76 cases occurred in men, 91 in women, and 4 were unspecified. Although certain types of antibiotics in the fluoroquinolones family were more commonly cited than others in the reports, the doctors found that “the number of cases were roughly proportional to the number of prescriptions written for each drug, suggesting that the problem involves the class of drugs rather than a particular product.”

171 cases in 23 years seems like a very small number, but, as the Los Angeles Times observes, medical researchers and data analysts generally agree that such complications are reported less than 10% of the time.

Although authors of the study, which was published in the September issue of the journal Ophthalmology, do not fully understand the link between the use of antibiotics and the occurrence of double vision, they suspect that it may have to do with the tendons that control the eye.

Antibiotic use is known to cause inflammation of the tendons (known as tendinitis) and tendon rupture, among other problems.

The full Los Angeles Times report can be viewed here.

SOURCE: Antibiotic Liver Damage › Double vision linked to several antibiotics

Before the 1936 discovery sulfanilamide and the 1941 discovery of penicillin, bacterial infections often transmuted into more serious conditions. Ear infections sometimes spread to the brain, causing meningitis. Strep throat sometimes turned into rheumatic fever. And pneumonia, left untreated, sometimes became an infection of the bloodstream, resulting in death.

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved approximately 60 antibiotics for use in children. American doctors dispense an estimated 30 million prescriptions annually for the treatment of pediatric ear infections alone.

Antibiotics have greatly extended our life spans and improved the quality of our lives, but for some patients those same antibiotics can be agents of destruction and death. A number of antibiotics have been weakened or rendered ineffective by inappropriate and excessive use throughout the years, prompting researchers to find new, more potent and effective antibiotics.

The FDA requires drug companies to thoroughly test newly developed antibiotics on adult subjects before it will approve them for use in children and infants. Because children are still developing their organs, they are naturally much more sensitive to antibiotics and other drugs.

However, when the FDA fails to thoroughly examine a drug for safety or “turns a blind eye to serious safety concerns,” as one legislator alleges it did, then the public is put at risk. And of course, the most susceptible patients are the children. Parents who worry about exposing their children to the risk of drug-induced liver injury should talk to their doctor and express their concerns about using certain types of antibiotics.

SOURCE: Antibiotic Liver Damage › Are antibiotics safe for children?