Can You Get Fluoroquinolone Arthritis?

 

Can you get Fluoroquinolone Arthritis from taking drugs such as Levaquin, Cipro and Avelox? The Quinolone and Fluoroquinolone family of antibiotics, which are prescribed more than 20 million times a year, have been blamed for a wide variety of illnesses, with a huge amount of case studies, research, and FDA reports to back up these claims. But can antibiotics really create a drug-induced arthritis?

Fluoroquinolone Drugs Damage Connective Tissue

Fluoroquinolone drugs are extremely damaging to connective tissue, which have caused them to be banned from being given to children, teens, and pregnant women, and was first discovered by giving Levaquin to Dogs. It’s this well-accepted and well-known tendency to damage connective tissue that also causes the undisputed side effect of  Tendon Rupture and Tendonitis from Fluoroquinolone Drugs, which puts Athletes Taking Cipro and Levaquin at extremely high risk of injury. New research even shows that the risk of a deadly vascular condition called an Aortic Aneurysm is doubled because of these drugs’ tendency to damage collagen.

It’s this same tendency to damage connective tissue that also can trigger or exacerbate arthritis. Joints depend on smooth intact connective tissue in the joint capsule in order to move smoothly, but the Fluoroquinolones can disrupt the growth and turnover of the connective tissue in the joint capsules, which can lead to the pain, swelling, and even joint damage that has been reported to the FDA by thousands of people.

Indeed, studies on dogs have reported a decreased amount of growth and an increased amount of damage to connective tissue in laboratory settings.

“Achilles paratenon, and shoulder capsule fibroblasts with ciprofloxacin resulted in a statistically significant 66% to 68% decrease in cell proliferation compared with control cells at day 3 in culture. Ciprofloxacin caused a statistically significant 36% to 48% decrease in collagen synthesis compared with controls in all fibroblast cultures.”¹

In fact, there are dozens of studies on dogs and joint problems from the Fluoroquinolone antibiotics. So, make sure that if you have a pet, that you check what kind of antibiotic you are given when you go to the veternarian, as dogs can be severely damaged and even lamed as a direct result of taking these antibiotics.

But do Humans Get Fluoroquinolone Arthritis?

Absolutely they do. Human studies have been incredibly disturbing, showing that Fluoroquinolone induced arthritis is a reality for many who take these drugs.

“In humans, the [cartilage] lesions [caused by the fluoroquinolones]
described are non-erosive symmetric arthropathies that frequently
effect the lower extremities… All quinolones appear to be
chondrotoxic [damaging to the cartilage].”
Drug-induced rheumatic disorders: incidence, prevention and management

Even the FDA, in it’s own documents, admits that, “irreversible cartilaginous lesion[s] can occur” in humans ², and research studies admit that “fluoroquinolones are toxic to chondrocytes”  ³ Considering that millions of prescriptions are written for the drugs like Cipro, Levaquin, and Avelox every year, it’s amazing that more people are not enduring Fluoroquinolone induced arthritis… or are they?

While OFFICIAL studies report joint pain at a mere 1% of patients taking Fluoroquinolones, the fact that in Fluoroquinolone Postmarketing studies, up to 25% of people taking these drugs report joint pain ⁴. Shockingly, these Antibiotics are Prescribed Unnecessarily 50% of the Time, meaning that at least 1/2 of these people suffering from Fluoroquinolone Arthritis, one in every 2, are suffering unnecessarily due to improper prescribing of the Fluoroquinolones.

Additionally, close to 10% of the elderly suffer from arthritis, and medicine still claims to not understand the causes of chronic arthritis. How do we know that the Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are not at least partially responsible for such a high rate of this painful chronic condition? We certainly can’t know this for sure, but we do know that there are thousands of people who claim that their arthritis was triggered by the Fluoroquinolone antibiotics, and that science tells us that reports of drug induced arthritis from the Fluoroquinolones are common. So, is the arthritis of older age merely a result of getting older? Or could large numbers of elderly merely suffering from unnecessary side effects of antibiotics they were given years before?

 

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