NEW YORK - Lethal blood-sugar complications in patients taking the antibiotic Tequin are a more routine occurrence than previously thought, a study by Canadian reserachers suggests. Tequin is chemically gatifloxacin and is manufactured by New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Reserachers at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Center in Toronto found that these risks are way beyond what was mentioned by the Food and Drug Administration in February, after Bristol-Myers had issued a warning to physicians to use Tequin with caution in diabetic patients.
The researchers examined more than 1,260 patients, who were hospitalized as a result of complications from blood glucose. All these patients had a history of using Tequin 30 days before they were admitted to the hospital.
"What we found was that people taking gatifloxacin had more than a fourfold increase in the risk of being treated in hospital for low blood sugar than people who were on other antibiotics," said Dr David Juurlink, a clinical pharmacologist at Sunnybrook and a co-author of the paper that is to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine later this month. "And the people on gatifloxacin had almost 17 times more risk of developing high blood sugar," he added.
Tequin received federal approval in 1999 and it is estimated that doctors write about 5,000 prescriptions each day to combat a variety of bacterial infections including lung, sinus and urinary tract infections.
"One percent is a significant risk, especially when 5,000 patients a day are taking this medicine. That's 50 patients a day, and that's only the ones we know about who were hospitalized," Juurlink said.
He added that the regulator as well as the drug's manufacturer ''should ask themselves whether the risks of this drug, which seem to be unique, are justifiable given the availability of so many alternative antibiotics that simply don't cause this problem."
