I am very grateful for the Quinolone Vigilance Foundation that contacted me yesterday whose director wrote a lovely note in the comments field on the first blog I wrote on Cipro and the drugs falling into the same class, called Quinolones.
Because this drug class is so often prescribed, it is likely that you had in the past taken drugs belonging to this category. If you did AND if you had adverse side effect(s) from the drug–immediately or later–see the 43-page warning label of what kind of adverse effects you may have experienced–you have options. There is information for you at the website of the Quinolone Vigilance Foundation where you can even find contact information to attorneys who specialize in cases relevant to this drug class.
As a victim you have rights. Proving the connection to the drug class itself–if your adverse effects were not immediate–may be harder than if you had an immediate reaction. Please contact the attorney(s) listed and find out your options! Please do take your options seriously! One of the best ways to get a drug or drug class off the market is by having lots of complaints about the drugs.
I also strongly advise everyone who had an adverse reaction to any of the drugs in the Fluoroquinolones family to file a complaint about the drug at the FDA – you need to download the form I linked here, fill it out and fax it or mail it to the fax/address listed on the form. The link under the word “complaints” takes you straight to where you should complain about non-life threatening adverse reactions from drugs or foods if you got sick from something! Save this link! It is important that you complain!
Angela
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About Angela A Stanton, Ph.D.
Angela A Stanton, PhD, is a Neuroeconomist focusing on chronic pain--migraine in particular--physiology, electrolyte homeostasis, nutrition, and genetics. She lives in Southern California. Her current research is focused on migraine cause, prevention, and treatment without the use of medicine. As a forever migraineur from childhood, her discovery was helped by experimenting on herself. She found the cause of migraine to be at the ionic level, associated with disruption of the electrolyte homeostasis, resulting from genetic variations of all voltage dependent channels, gates, and pumps (chanelopathy) that modulate electrolyte mineral density and voltage in the brain. In addition, insulin and glucose transporters, and several other variants, such as MTHFR variants of B vitamin methylation process and many others are different in the case of a migraineur from the general population.
Migraineurs are glucose sensitive (carbohydrate intolerant) and should avoid eating carbs as much as possible. She is working on her hypothesis that migraine is a metabolic disease.
As a result of the success of the first edition of her book and her helping over 5000 migraineurs successfully prevent their migraines world wide, all ages and both genders, and all types of migraines, she published the 2nd (extended) edition of her migraine book "Fighting The Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide: How To Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications". The 2nd edition is the “holy grail” of migraine cause, development, and prevention, incorporating all there is to know. It includes a long section for medical and research professionals. The book is full of academic citations (over 800) to authenticate the statements she makes to make it easy to follow up by those interested and to spark further research interest. It is a "Complete Guide", published on September 29, 2017.
Dr. Stanton received her BSc at UCLA in Mathematics, MBA at UCR, MS in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, PhD in Economics with dissertation in neuroscience (culminating in Neuroeconomics) at Claremont Graduate University, fMRI certification at Harvard University Medical School at the Martinos Center for Neuroimaging for experimenting with neurotransmitters on human volunteers, certification in LCHF/ketogenic diet from NN (Nutrition Network), certification in physiology (UPEN via Coursea), Nutrition (Harvard Shool of Public Health) and functional medicine studies. Dr. Stanton is an avid sports fan, currently power weight lifting and kickboxing. For relaxation (yeah.. about a half minute each day), she paints and photographs and loves to spend time with her family of husband of 45 years, 2 sons and their wives, and 2 granddaughters.
Follow her on Twitter at: @MigraineBook, LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaastantonphd/ and facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DrAngelaAStanton/
Clueless Doctors & Scientists 
Hi, I know this post is old. But I am trying to look for answers and found it. My husband had cipro for 5 days after a surgery. 20 days later he started having cramps, tingles in his arms, legs, a lot of pain and his bones cracking. He was given Celecoxib and everything stopped for a week or so and stopped taking the medication and his symptoms came back even worst for like 3-4 days and now he’s taking Berifen and symptoms have stopped again. Could this be related to cipro? He also has pain in his back and where his kidneys are. If someone reads this post, please help! Can cipro toxicity go on and off?
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Dear Dora,
I find the return of his symptoms less odd than that his symptoms vanished while taking NSAIDs. Cipro–or other fluroquinolones–cause damage to mitochondrial DNA rather than cause inflammation, so if his damage is from Cipro, it would not likely to respond to NSAIDs. Could it be that the surgery he received caused some nerve damage?
Pain in his back where his kidneys are can indicate kidney stones, kidney infection, gallbladder issues pancreatitis, and even liver problems–including fatty liver disease and more serious conditions as well. I would recommend he should head back to the doctor for a full evaluation about his pain-that may be the driver of all other symptoms.
Best wishes,
Angela
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Pingback: Fluoroquinolones & Aneurysm the FDA Warns | Clueless Doctors fail to keep up with the latest science.
Hi, I was on and off metronidazole and cipro for a couple years and did not have an issue until two months ago, when I took it for 3 days and had extreme vertigo depression, crying spells, depersonalizations, numbing to my face and neck pain, tingling arms and legs. Then I felt a little better then all over again. I have been on Effexor 37.5 for years with no issues. I am trying to figure out if this is gonna get better or worse? Did I go through withdrawal of the antidepressant? Are these seizures? I am soo scared, what kind if dr can help me not even the neurologist knows anything. So far it’s been the longest two months of my life and I don’t know where to turn.
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Hi Melissa. Metronidazole is a special antibiotic for anarobic bacteria and other organism like protozoa and amoeba so it is against serious stuff. Cipro is a quinolone family antibiotics that we know is harmful. The symptoms you are mentioning though do not sound like the ones we normally see from quinolones but they can very well be caused by amoeba type infections–as you know, there is no such as a wall or a barrier for an amoeba… it goes through everything. It can be fatal. I don’t know how long this happened and since you are still on Effexor (I assume) you probably were not going through withdrawal but adaptation is possible. Adaptation’s fancy new name is “discontinuation syndrome” rather than withdrawal from a drug that is addictive to the brain in such a way that the brain cannot manage without it but it need not require larger doses. Adaptation though does. So if you are still on Effexor and have these symptoms, that may be what you are facing: adaptation. To prevent your brain from adapting to a drug like that, the only thing you can do is 1) switch to another drug that does the same or similar with a similar dose or reduce the dose very slowly while taking a serotonin replacement medicine that then is easier to quite. Effexor has 2 elements it loads your brain with which makes it very hard to quit;; it is a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor so you need to have medicines for both serotonin and also norepinephrine to be able to slowly quit. It may take over a year to get off these drugs… it has to be extremely gradual. If your doctor agrees to a reduction, I do have a calendar schedule for highly addictive (or dependent) drugs. Let me know. Hope you feel better!
Cheers,
Angela
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My wife took one dose of cipro 22 years ago and within 5 minutes went into anaphylactic shock. By the time I got her to the hospital, she had no respiration and no pulse. Fortunately, an epinephrine injection brought her back, but she still had another attack the following day, while still hospitalized. Shortly after discharge she began having inexplicable digestion problems. Food just seemed to almost immediately pass shortly after ingestion, in the same state that it was taken in. Eventually that got a little better, but then she began having prolonged tachycardia events, which required SVT ablation therapy. All seemed to be well for a period of years thereafter, but about six years ago she woke up with one side of her face paralyzed. It wasn’t a stroke or Bell’s Palsy…just a mystery. The paralysis got a little better over time, but she experienced extreme vertigo, skin lesions and hearing loss shortly thereafter. Then the joint pain began, which still continues and severly impacts her mobility. Then her hair and eyebrows began to fall out and her spleen began to grow. It was removed in June and weighed 35 pounds…it was so large it had partially deflated a lung. No neurologic damage has been found, and her rheumatologist says that while she has fibromyalgia, she is only borderline for lupus, and her extreme fatigue, joint pain and depression are most probably due to the fact that, for a 55 year old, she is inactive and overweight….wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he can’t diagnose her, so her so its just simply easier for him to insinuate that she’s fat and lazy and has brought all of this on herself. In doing internet research recently, I have begun to wonder if the cipro didn’t do permanent damage to her all those years ago, with autoimmune implications that we are still seeing.
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Oh my Vic! That is absolutely terrible! I feel so sorry for her and for you! I think you really need to file 2 things–not sure if you actually did that yet. One of them is to file and MedWatch adverse reactions for Cipro since it matters how many adverse reactions are reported. The also please place a comment on my citizen petition against Cipro. I have a petition going now for about 6 months or more and it is still open for comments–there are 4 comments but I cannot see them. It would help stop this and all drugs in this class put away for emergency use only for life/death choices but definitely not for everyday kind of illnesses. Sorry about your life changing experience and I know how little doctors know!!! It is best if you put your allergy medications up to date on the medical system and tell them you are allergic to all quinolone class drugs (Cipro is in that). I did that immediately–I too got injured. Best of luck to you and wife! Keep in touch and I am very glad to hear that you are staying with her and helping her! That shows a lot of strength and character on your part! ❤
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Thanks, Angela….will do.
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I was cipro then 8n days later put on levaquin for pleeural effusion. 2 days later on life support.
Had sepsis septic shock A.R.D.S. and HHypoxic resp failure. 3 yrs 10 m later and am completely disabled. Can’t walk normal, major in right hand, smaller on left, sometimes tremor in head. Come to find out every single thing that happened to me was listed in the 10% of the warnings we can’t see. Only Drs and Pharm. right down to the pleural effusion that started it all.
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Very sorry to hear Julie! I just came back from the doctor (tick bite) and I thought I ask her if she knew the adverse side effects of drugs in the Quinolone family. The only one she knew was the tendon tear! When I told her about neuropathy, she looked at me like I was a total idiot. And she was not the first one. I have tested now several doctors (within my healthcare system, which is Kaiser) and only my pulmonary specialist knew about all the dangers but none of the other doctors I asked. I bet not one of the pharmacists knows either since they also did not know that the doctor prescribed drug for my mom who was allergic to serotonin was a serotonin drug! And that is not even a side effect but just a classification! I would venture to say that no one other than the sufferers know what you are going through except for a handful of scientists, most of whom have no impact on the industry at all. I am both a scientist and a sufferer as well though my injury was the tendon problem–so far… sometimes symptoms of damage show up later! So I know what this is about and I will do my best to fight against injuries.
I have contacted Bayer Pharmaceutical via twitter yesterday and they are now following this blog (and my twitter) so rest assured they are preparing their revisions. I find that the brand name does not appear as often on the FDA complaint list as the generic. There can be 2 reasons for that. 1) doctors prescribe or pharmacists replace brand name orders with generic 10 times as often as brand name. 2) The generic drug’s inactive ingredient promotes a different absorption mechanism in the body thereby changing the drug, which is against FDA regulation and is subject for a lawsuit against the FDA for permitting generic drugs with different inactive ingredients from the brand name and consider that to be the same! Please visit the blog I just wrote yesterday: https://cluelessdoctors.com/2014/10/13/those-pesky-inactive-ingredients-in-generic-drugs-cipro-vs-ciprofloxin/ to see the differences between brand name and generic–in this case I analyzed Cipro only. I will be analyzing every single drug and also look at the law to see what the FDA does or does not suggest about the inactive ingredients.
In the meantime, I have learned a lot about what happens to the cells from this drug: it mutates the DNA in each of our cells systemic so all through your body. It also removes all magnesium and ATP at the same time so your cells basically starve. Many people (including me) have found that taking chelated magnesium helps a ton. Please start taking extra magnesium every day–500 mg minimum but don’t go higher than 1000 mg. Start slow by 250 mg to be sure you have no reaction and then go from there. Get the chelated ones since they absorb better in the body and in the right place–they are coated.
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Sorry to say calling a lawyer will not help unless you consider a settlement of $800.00 help. The current Minnesota Levaquin MDL Johnson and Johnson is winning and most people are still left with little or nothing. I hope the next law suit turns out better for my floxie friends. The lawyers are taking about 60 percent after their percentage and expenses. Levaquin hurt me badly I deserve more than $800.00,
Minnesota Levaquin MDL
http://www.mnd.uscourts.gov/MDL-Levaquin/
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Sorry to hear Tami. Unfortunately it will remain small amount until everyone starts to complain. The problem is that most people prefer to stay silent and suffer alone. This neither helps the knowledge of the people in general nor the FDA to see that this drug must be pulled from the market. Complaints by the thousand must hit the FDA on these drugs from all sufferers in order for it to show up on their radar screens. Miracles will never happen against pharmaceuticals because 9-% of our drug cost goes toward financing their lawyer teams! They probably have more attorneys on staff than researchers. Your health may be improved significantly if you follow the blog I wrote after this on a single person’s story. There are several recovery stories from many people but it takes amazing amount of trial and error and endurance and watching like a hawk what is changing in your body so you can act immediately. Even if you receive a million dollars from a settlement, it will still not bring your health back. At this point I would recommend that you read the recovery article on the next blog, see if your symptoms are similar to what hers were, and see if you can follow any of her solutions. She gives the names of all treatments she applied. I find the article worthy to read for self help. And of course, you do need to file a complaint with the FDA so they have your complaint on file as well. The more the better! Because ultimately the goal is to remove this drug from the market and then to find treatment to those who got hurt. Until these drugs are on the market, no one will look for treatment of damage since as far as the FDA/pharmaceutical company is concerned, there is no damage.. see what I mean?
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This trial was corrupt..I will be posting more about it when I can.
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Is there a trial that is not corrupt? 😦
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Theresa, I just posted an article on a separate blog that is a re-blog from a person who got Cipro toxicity and her story of how she is overcoming it over the years! She has amazing strength and knowledge so I re-blogged it for everyone’s reference so we all know if and when this hits! Please read her solution and you may find something that works for you!
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I was severely and chronically damaged by a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. This was given for an unconfirmed infection. These dangerous drugs are overly prescribed in a reckless manner. How different my life would be if only I was given a safer choice. This madness has to stop. Lives are being needlessly ruined.
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It is very unfortunate that it is so! I hope that we can make a difference by bringing more awareness to the toxicity of this drug. I have just re-blogged an article from a “survivor” of a Cipro toxicity and how and what she did to recover. You may find it a useful read as well!
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I agree Crosbyj2014. Please file a complaint on the FDA website! Very important! We need to have them overloaded with complaints!
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Angela, you’ve been very busy the past few days! I appreciate all you’re doing to get this important info out to people. I have had many symptoms that I didn’t realize were due to fluoroquinolones prescribed several times over the years. Each time my health got much worse, in many ways, but numerous doctors and numerous tests couldn’t figure out why. The last time, in June 2011, I figured it out. Most doctors still deny it despite the 43-pg warnings. There were a few that confirmed the connection. But they don’t know what to do to help. So I have permanent damage caused by an antibiotic that didn’t even cure the infection. I had to be given a weaker, much safer one to cure the infection. If the fluoroquinolone antibiotic would’ve been used as a last resort as it is supposed to be, only after other safer things have been tried, I would not have needed it and wouldn’t have all this permanent damage! Thank you so much for your interest in this!!!
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I feel terrible after 13 years of taking cipro. It’s been an absolute nightmare
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What are your symptoms Theresa?
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