The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine recently published a study that found that nearly one in five tuberculosis patients had received fluoroquinolones in the year before they were diagnosed with TB.
Fluoroquinolones, or super-strong antibiotics, are typically given for about 10 days. It was noted that for every additional ten days a patient took the medications, the odds of developing fluoroquinolone-resistant TB increased by 50 percent.
This class of super-antibiotics is easily available in many developing-world pharmacies. Fluoroquinolones are usually available without a prescription, under names such as Cipro and Levaquin. Doctors have been likely mis-prescribing them to treat everything from pneumonia to diarrhea.
According to the results of this study it would make me very hesitant to support using these so called super-antibiotics, or fluoroquinolones, as the first choice against TB.These drugs have also been linked to peripheral neuropathy and tendon rupture.
BM