Certain Antibiotics Spur Widening Reports of Severe Side Effects

PBS NewsHour:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Next, a Health Unit report about a medical mystery, and the questions it's raising about the drug-monitoring system. It involves a class of antibiotic drugs that some people say are making them very ill.

Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser has the story.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Just a few years ago, Jenne Wilcox was a happily married healthy first-grade teacher in Oroville, Calif., helping husband Rob raise his son Cole from a previous marriage.

But all that changed suddenly after she took a prescription drug called Levaquin to prevent infection following routine sinus surgery. Wilcox developed severe pain in her joints and muscles, and even when she stopped taking the medication, the symptoms grew worse, until she could no longer walk.

JENNE WILCOX, patient: I couldn't even hold my head up. And I was bedridden for over a year. And when I say that, I mean, I couldn't even get myself out of bed to get into my wheelchair to go use the restroom. I had to be picked up out of bed.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 18, 2011 1:01 AM
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