An antibiotic that is widely prescribed in India to combat bacterial sinus infections and bronchitis has been found to be bad for heart.
A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, has found a 2.5-fold higher risk of cardiovascular death in the first five days of taking Azithromycin — commonly called Z-pack — compared with another common antibiotic or no antibiotic at all.
Though it was previously considered to carry little to no cardiac risk, researchers noted well-documented reports linking azithromycin with serious arrhythmias.
When compared with another antibiotic like amoxicillin, there were about 47 more deaths per million courses of therapy in those taking azithromycin.
That risk increased to 245 additional cardiovascular deaths per million in patients already known to have heart problems.
For the study, about 348,000 recorded prescriptions of azithromycin were compared with millions of similar records from people who were not treated with antibiotics or were treated with other antibiotics.
The primary comparison was with amoxicillin, an antibiotic that is considered to be safe for heart and is used in similar clinical circumstances as azithromycin.
Dr Anoop Misra, chairman of Fortis-C-DOC centre for diabetes and metabolic diseases, said, “With wide variety of antibiotics currently available, Azithromycin (and other antibiotics in this class) should be used with extreme caution and only when no alternatives are available, and especially when there is history of cardiovascular problems in patients using it.”
Drug expert C M Gulhati said, “Azithromycin is a very commonly used antibiotic that belong to the group macrolides. When it was found that penicillin caused serious allergy, Azithromycin became the most common alternative.” He said Azithromycin is primarily used against lower respiratory tract infections, acute bacterial bronchitis, community acquired pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infections, skin infections and uncomplicated arthritis due to Chlamydia trachomatis.
A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, has found a 2.5-fold higher risk of cardiovascular death in the first five days of taking Azithromycin — commonly called Z-pack — compared with another common antibiotic or no antibiotic at all.
Though it was previously considered to carry little to no cardiac risk, researchers noted well-documented reports linking azithromycin with serious arrhythmias.
When compared with another antibiotic like amoxicillin, there were about 47 more deaths per million courses of therapy in those taking azithromycin.
That risk increased to 245 additional cardiovascular deaths per million in patients already known to have heart problems.
For the study, about 348,000 recorded prescriptions of azithromycin were compared with millions of similar records from people who were not treated with antibiotics or were treated with other antibiotics.
The primary comparison was with amoxicillin, an antibiotic that is considered to be safe for heart and is used in similar clinical circumstances as azithromycin.
Dr Anoop Misra, chairman of Fortis-C-DOC centre for diabetes and metabolic diseases, said, “With wide variety of antibiotics currently available, Azithromycin (and other antibiotics in this class) should be used with extreme caution and only when no alternatives are available, and especially when there is history of cardiovascular problems in patients using it.”
Drug expert C M Gulhati said, “Azithromycin is a very commonly used antibiotic that belong to the group macrolides. When it was found that penicillin caused serious allergy, Azithromycin became the most common alternative.” He said Azithromycin is primarily used against lower respiratory tract infections, acute bacterial bronchitis, community acquired pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infections, skin infections and uncomplicated arthritis due to Chlamydia trachomatis.
No comments:
Post a Comment