MSNBC

Anthrax cure has its own dangers

After five days on Cipro, Jill Perel can’t imagine why anyone would take the anti-anthrax drug without a clear need and a doctor’s prescription. “I had never been so sick,” she said from Delray Beach, Fla. “People taking Cipro with no exposure to anthrax have to be out of their minds.”

Antibiotic Cipro linked to unpleasant, even harmful side effects Cipro, an antibiotic made by German drugmaker Bayer AG, is effective against anthrax, but also is making some patients sick.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Oct. 31 — After five days on Cipro, Jill Perel can’t imagine why anyone would take the anti-anthrax drug without a clear need and a doctor’s prescription. “I had never been so sick,” she said from Delray Beach, Fla. “People taking Cipro with no exposure to anthrax have to be out of their minds.” FOR MANY people, warding off a possible case of anthrax infection has become a pain in the neck, head, belly and more, thanks to the unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side effects of the antibiotic.

Some are all too happy to exchange it for doxycycline, the antibiotic the government is now recommending for those possibly exposed to anthrax spores. Although doxycycline also is not to be taken lightly, its side effects are rarer and tend to be less serious.

“I have two more days of it,” Doug Burton, a 27-year-old engineer for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said of his Cipro treatment. “One morning I took it with milk and cereal. I felt like I was going to throw up.”

He was standing in line outside the District of Columbia General Hospital, waiting to get his prescription for doxycycline.

Perel landed in the hospital after taking Cipro. She took the drug because she had been at American Media Inc., a tabloid publishing company in Boca Raton, Fla., where a photo editor died of inhalation anthrax.

But five days after she started taking it, Perel, wife of the National Enquirer’s editor, David Perel, had a toxic reaction that affected her body’s ability to make bone marrow.

“I could not even get out of bed,” she said. “I was dizzy, vomiting, had a fever and a pounding, pounding headache. That headache took forever to go away.”

Doctors put her on doxycycline. When that made her sick to her stomach, she and her doctors decided that because her risk of exposure to anthrax was minimal, she would stop taking the antibiotics altogether. But her husband has stayed on Cipro, a cure for anthrax when taken early. “His knees hurt,” she said. “He has no energy.”

When anthrax cases surfaced, the government recommended Cipro, which is in a special class of drugs prescribed when doctors don’t know exactly how vulnerable an organism is to particular antibiotics.

On Monday, government health officials began to recommend doxycycline, believed equally effective in treating anthrax, because they feared some common bacteria could become resistant to Cipro if it were overprescribed. It’s also cheaper and more available than Cipro. OVER 10,000 PRESCRIPTIONS

More than 10,000 postal and mail room employees, Capitol Hill workers and others have been prescribed Cipro as a treatment or precaution. Officials say people should not take it without a doctor’s guidance but that has not stopped some Americans from hoarding the drug.

The Physician’s Desk Reference reports that of 2,799 patients who took Cipro during clinical investigations, 16.5 percent had adverse reactions that were possibly or probably related to the drug. The most frequently reported reactions: nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal discomfort, headache, restlessness and rashes.

More serious but much rarer effects include hallucinations, depression, gastrointestinal bleeding, kidney failure, joint problems or heart attacks — occurring in less than 1 percent of patients.

“My wife took one pill and ended up in the emergency room and ended up with side effects that she still is being treated for today,” said Stephen Fried, who wrote a book about the hazards of legal drugs after his wife suffered a reaction in 1992 to Floxin, an antibiotic in the same family as ciprofloxacin.

“In her case, it triggered manic-depressive illness and a seizure.”

It’s rare, but drugs in that family also have been associated with the rupture of tendons, he said.

“People are running to get Cipro because it’s the brand name version of the treatment and most of them don’t realize there are risks,” he said.

Rosalyn Graham, a Government Printing Office employee, is more concerned about anthrax than antibiotic risks.

Although a post office tainted with anthrax delivers to her building, she was told she probably could not get the antibiotics being dispensed from D.C. General because she could not show she had direct exposure.

Graham decided to stay in line anyway. “I just want to get the pills,” she said.

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2001

Answers

A friend of mine told me that Cipro is one of the drugs used by cistic fibrosis patients to help with the pneumonia they are prone to. Her concern was that with the widespread use of it the bacteria the causes pneumonia will become resistent and CF patients will have a tougher time getting well.

DH and I have taken Cipro once and that was for a upper respiratory infection that simply would not get better using other antibiotics. This year the doctor gave me tecquin (sp?) and when I looked it up, found that it is also part of the floxin family of drugs. While I didn't really have side effects, it makes me not really want to take them again.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001

I posted an extensive report on Cipro here.

Seems no one read it, but I went to a lot of trouble to get it to post correctly with all links hot.

It is a scary drug, in a family of scary drugs. While I don't want to get Anthrax and then take Cipro, I don't want to take Cipro to keep from getting Anthrax.

Of late, the CDC has been reccomending a different drug. the name escapes me, though.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001

Ok, I'll admit that I didn't read it the first time, but I read it now. I don't think I will take it again that's for sure.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001

BF, probly a lot of people read it. I did. We also have all these lurkers who read the threads but never even say, "Wow, interesting!" (Hint, hint.)

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001

I was just teasing about it being read because I had to do so much to it so it would post correctly.

-- Anonymous, November 03, 2001