Mothers Fibromyalgia: Antibiotic Effects

[Arkansawyer]

My mother was DXed with firbromyalgia years ago, in her mid twenties. She has always experienced some mild neuro type symptoms, it seems most everyone in our family does. Recently she took a high powered antibiotic for a kidney infection, I can't remember the name of it though. Within 24 hours of taking it she was shaking internally, tremoring on her right hand and some on her left, her muscles were twitching all over and she became severely fatigued. She stopped the course but her symptoms have continued for over a week with varying degrees of severity. She went to her doctor who ran a full panel of blood work and an MRI, he said it may be MS. I however disagreed and said I didn't think that was it, I figured her MRI would be clean but her blood work would be off in some of the vitamins. Lo and behold she had a Vitamin D level of 22, and her B12 was in the low end of normal. The doctor told us that for about 8-12% of the population B12 levels that were considered on the low end of "normal" can cause all sorts of neurological symptoms. Oh and her MRI was clean.Anyway, her symptoms have continued for a bout two weeks now, some days are better than others. Her day to day experience sounds like a dead ringer for BFS. Did anyone else here have their symptoms start after taking a high power antibiotic, or an infection? She said she may check out the board just to see what others are going through as she was convinced that it was something serious. She has always rolled her eyes a bit at my BFS complaints and said that it was all in my head, now she seems a bit more understanding, though I wish she didn't have to deal with it first hand.

 

[christinasgirl123]

Sorry to hear about your mum. Besides anxiety issues, some antibiotics seem to be one extremely common trigger for BFS. There's a new post on here about the FDA warnings about neurological side effects of this antibiotic group. It contains cipro and some others that are used less frequently, but cipro is used quite a lot these days. I have made similar experiences with cotrimazole , thank god the sx stopped after I quit the antibiotics. Before the newer generations the usual side effects were affecting the gut system. The new ones seem to be better accepted by the gut, but the other side effects are sometimes really terrible.

 

[ftheatre]

Chrissi, I see you are talking about fluoroquinolones antibiotics. In fact, they are the most used drugs today for urinary tract infection, especially in men. I was on a new course of this drug but just stopped because I really suspect him and finally convince my doctor to put me on a different one, not FQ. The more I have consulted about it the more I think this antibiotic family is probably responsible for a lot of BFS like syndromes, including CFS, fibromyalgia and so on.It shares the sames symptoms, have the same relapsing cycle, this is just amazing... I was put on the antibiotics 3 times (now 4 in fact) in my life and have had differents symptoms all listed on the intoxication list. I am not 100% sure of course, and I probably never will be, but I think there is 90% chances that it's the root cause for me.

 

[Arkansawyer]

Cipro! That was the one she was on. Apparently it causes a lot of people issues.

 

[christinasgirl123]

Oh OK here they use hardly FQ, only in special cases when the classicals like amoxi or cotrimazole do not work. For me, Cipro this year was the antibiotic I tolerated best, but I wonder what that antibiotic was that I was put on for my infection when my BFS broke out.