I have something wrong with my HPA axis resulting in Cushing's syndrome that causes extreme anxiety, high hr & bp persistently. It's usually an adenoma or hypertrophy on a pituitary or adrenal, or metabolic syndrome.
What was the surgery like by the way? it sounds painful.
Antibiotics are poison to bacteria.
The difference here is that you're not a bacteria and can safely metabolize the drug itself.
Chocolate is poison to dogs. Not to humans.
One course of an antibiotic isn't going to rot your brain or nerves... and even then, chronic use isn't a problem but for a small percentage of people who do experience these adverse reactions.
All eurkaryotic cells have little trapped bacteria inside themm -- your mitochondria. The mutualistic cooperation between the mitochondria and the surrounding cell is an ancient and delecate dance.
And lo and behold, mitochondrial toxicity from antibiotics is a thing, and fluoroquinolones are suspected to cause it.
If someone wants to claim an approved medication is especially poisonous, the onus should be on them to provide evidence. Note that the great-great-grandparents 3 links are all individual case studies. One of them summarizes the situation: "overall, the frequency and severity of adverse events are rather low".
If one person experiences it in a trial of a group of, say, 60... That becomes a risk of 1.6% in the side effects profile.
Real world cases would be much, much, much lower to the point to where doctors in the ER wouldn't even know what they're looking at when it happens. Sometimes it gets diagnosed as a 'drug eruption' or an allergy, when it's more an immune hypersensitivity response.
I know anecdotal isn't what people want around here, but I had a reaction to Sulfa that was later diagnosed as Stevens Johnson Syndrome. The doctor who prescribed it to me never personally saw a case of it herself until I came along. Even then, she sent me to a dermatologist first.
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-5530/bactrim-ds-oral/deta...
However, It's commonly listed at the top of the side effects list for this drug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevens%E2%80%93Johnson_syndro...
Actual incidence of the syndrome?
> SJS is a rare condition, with a reported incidence of around 2.6[10] to 6.1[26] cases per million people per year. In the United States, about 300 new diagnoses are made each year. The condition is more common in adults than in children.
Up to 6 cases per million per year across ALL drugs and not just the one I mentioned here.
Even common over the counter medications like Ibuprofen is known to cause SJS. The odds, however, are vanishingly small.
The risk exists, yes, but the perspective needed is that when you see percentages reported... that's not a "1.5% chance", that is "1.5% of those in a particular group experienced this side effect while 98.5% did not."
This information is typically provided in the published drug facts for each medication.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2686432/
https://www.rxlist.com/cipro-drug.htm#dosage
Studies provide further info.
> or what doseage that occurs at or what causes this reaction in the subpopulation?
It's through trials they discover the incidence of side effects and appropriate dosages for maximum therapeutic benefit.
> You don't and just wave that off, that's why it's flippant.
Nobody is waving anything off when providing perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid_dementia_syndrome#Case...
I was on prednisolone for a couple of months a few years ago. I can't say I was very intelligent before that, but it's certainly took a toll on my memory and cognitive abilities. (No, it's probably not hypochondria, I didn't even know corticosteroids could have such consequences when I noticed the problem.)
> The medications included prednisone, and methylprednisolone, plus albuterol, beclomethasone, dexamethasone, cromolyn, salmeterol and clarithromycin.
> The treatment with steroids was stopped and three years later (while still taking buspirone, albuterol, fluticasone and salmeterol inhalers, loratadine and theophylline)
Yeah, this was more than just one steroid doing something to him. When you have a situation where someone is on that many different medications, it's no longer a case where you can simply point to one thing and say "that caused it." There's no telling what other underlying conditions were exacerbated in the process and what side effects may be due to the drugs NOT discontinued.
The above sounds like nuclear option amounts of asthma meds and it's reasonable to expect potential long term effects.
That being said, inhaled steroids are considered much, much safer than oral ones, due to much smaller doses and targeted effects.
The issues lasted about 6 months, during which time I took a few daily supplements recommended in the research I found. I seem to have fully recovered but I've read about others not so fortunate.
Confident asides as in '(we) can safely metabolize the drug itself' are unhelpful and indeed wrong for certain people.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2015/11/09/common-ant...
"Macrolide antibiotics caused an additional 36 sudden cardiac deaths per million treatment courses. So about 1:8,500 patients will develop a serious arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, and 1:30,000 would die because of the antibiotics."
Splitting hairs to point out exceptions doesn't change the rule.