Scientists at the University of
British Columbia (UBC) and the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) have
linked two commonly prescribed antibiotic drugs to a higher risk of developing
heart disease.
The study found that users of
fluoroquinolone antibiotics, such as Ciprofloxacin or Cipro, face a 2.4 times
greater risk of developing aortic and mitral regurgitation, a heart condition
where the blood backflows into the heart.
This is compared to patients who
take amoxicillin, a different type of antibiotic.
The researchers analyzed data
from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse reporting system as well
as a private insurance health claims database that captures demographics of
patients, the drug identification, the prescribed dosage, and the treatment
duration.
They, thereafter, identified
12,505 cases of valvular regurgitation with 125,020 case-control subjects in a
random sample of more than nine million patients who had ingested the drugs.
According to their findings,
published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, those who
currently consume the drugs reported the highest risk of aortic and mitral
regurgitation followed by those who had recently used it.
In the words of Mahyar Etminan,
lead author of the study and associate professor of ophthalmology and at UBC,
there is a need for regulatory agencies to add the risk of aortic and mitral
regurgitation to their alerts as potential side effects of these drugs.
“You can send patients home with
a once-a-day pill. This class of antibiotics is very convenient. But, for the
majority of cases, especially community-related infections, they’re not really
needed. Inappropriate prescribing may cause both antibiotic resistance as well as
serious heart problems,” he stated.
According to the researchers,
these findings should prompt physicians to be more thoughtful and use other
classes of antibiotics as the first line of defense for uncomplicated
infections.
“This study highlights the need
to be thoughtful when prescribing antibiotics, which can sometimes cause harm,”
added Bruce Carleton, a research investigator at BC Children’s Hospital, a
program o the PHSA.
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