Ciprofloxacin poisoning?

Thank you for sharing this information!

Keep in mind the symptoms that are lingering around may be permanent at this point. My gastro doc is a top 5 surgeon in the state of California and he knows very well what’s going on with side effects and lawsuits from cipro snd levaquin. 

He told me there is no cure and he can only treat my symptoms which was my colon. I have to add hundreds of billions of good bacteria to my colon everyday and he said that may be for the rest of my life.  The cipro wiped out all of my good bacteria in my colon over those 30 days which is not good. I could have died. But he said we can keep adding good bacteria and it will kind of make things normal again but he isn’t sure colon issue will ever go away. They did do a colonoscopy and found nothing. All normal. That’s was great news but that explained why things were happening.

Hi Chris ,we were told that if the good flora had been destroyed and that you try to replace it with probiotics sometimes  the ones you are using and the type you are using ie : liquid or capsule form and certain strains may not be the ones to do the trick. Have you had your stool tested for Candida ? My husband was tested and it was negative. If after taking your cipro the gut leaves openings for yeast to get in and set up home. The fungal overgrowth can cause severe problems. My husband sent off his test to be analised for Candida and parasites. Eric Bakker is currently looking into my husbands gut issues as he had an inflammatory marker come up in his recent test and he suggests it is leaky gut . I shall not give up this battle . My poor husband is a fighter and is a very brave man . 

They tested everything and all was normal. I am using the strongest with the most strains available to the public. It’s expensive. 

It was explained that the good bacteria provides a coating in your colon and you can pass stools normally with it intact. When that bacteria is destroyed you need the right amount and type of probiotics to normalize it again otherwise it will feel like your stool is a knife cutting you and you will have blood in your stools. A lot of blood. That’s what happened to me. It still happens a few times a month and the probiotic I am using makes so I have that normal feeling again. Sometimes I still have blood but nothing like 2 years ago when I had blood in my stool for a year straight and all the doctors said that was my new norm which I couldn’t except. When is blood in your stools ever normal?  Never. 6 doctors said it was. Whatever. I also had an endoscopy and all was normal. I had 7 vials of blood taken every 30 days for almost a year and they tested everything and nothing came back. I thought I had cancer but nothing ever came back abnormal. So fast forward to today and almost 2.5 years later and all that’s lingering around is the occasional blood in my stool, sensitivity to pet dander, slow healing, fast heartbeat sometimes and that’s about it. All of that my doctors said may be my new norm. Only time will tell. 

Hi Chris, I know of a couple of people in the UK who have paid out huge sums of money for  Faecal Microbe Transplants.  Both reported that they felt a little better initially but after a while nothing had really changed and back to square one. 

I also know a Scandinavian lady who has almighty gut problems many years after taking antibiotics  - although she was quick to point out that they weren't FQs. We all know that other ABx do knock out the gut bacteria and hers were also serious meds although I'm not sure which ones. I'm adding this as you would expect more doctors to be familiar with the scenario of patients guts being seriously damaged after ABx but do they warn us?  Nope!

I'm sure what you say is correct, that you (and others) should take large amounts of probiotics daily for ever - and vary what is in those PBx.  Do you have any success with eating particular foods (prebiotics) to encourage and feed the friendly flora once they're on board?  I've also heard products like kombucha are very beneficial - and easy to brew/grow at home.  Thinking of getting a starter kit for this as it's expensive to buy.

My belief is that those who have been hit very hard by FQs will never fully recover.  In the groups it seems that some are back to near normal after 3-5 years, others see much improvement but are not 100% by 5 years while a few are still in as much pain after 5 or 7 years as they were to start with. It's the most unkind lotto of all.

Hi YellowCard (good name!),

Thanks for posting this link to the drug safety update which was issued at the end of March. These new restrictions came about after the European Medicines Agency reviewed the serious and possibly disabling side effects from not only Ciprofloxacin but also the other fluoroquinolones- Levofloxacin, Moxifloxacin and Ofloxacin. These are the names to watch out for, but then there are the generic names too so I always tell people to look for the class "fluoroquinolone". It should be as well known as penicillin but very few people have actually heard of these antibiotics.

I would be very interested to know in what capacity you see patients inappropriately prescribed Cipro. I have been telling MHRA that their warnings weren't strong enough but they say they were hampered by what the EMA told them to say - while the EMA say it's up to the MHRA and other national agencies! While they bicker, more and more people are being affected everyday but they generally don't realise what is wrong with them and nor do their doctors (despite the long list of side effects in the SmPC and PIL!).

Please do say more, or pm me if you prefer. I took part in the Review and the Public Hearing.