According to recent news in the medical community, doctors are concerned over quinolone antibiotics causing severe side effects. Some of these quinolone side effects include permanent nerve damage, like peripheral neuropathy, and optic nerve injuries that can limit or completely diminish a person’s vision.

Medical experts speculate that all types of quinolones are just as likely to increase the risk of such severe eye injury side effects, so patients should be wary of any signs of vision loss or eye pain. This means quinolone medications including Avelox, Cipro, Levaquin, Noroxin, and Factive and other drugs in the fluoroquinolone family may induce these eye injury reactions. While peripheral neuropathy is not specified to eye damage, it does affect the nerves attached to the brain and spinal cord, which can wreak havoc on the nerves throughout the body.

In light of this, patients could be at risk for eye damage if they are already suffering from quinolone peripheral neuropathy, since the optic nerves in the eyes may be affected. This is because the signals in the nerves are being interrupted, which often leads patients to suffer from pain, numbness, tingling, burning, and shooting pain. In other words, because nerve damage often leads to other side effects like eye problems, patients should report any abnormalities as soon as possible when taking quinolone antibiotic treatments.

Overview of Quinolone Eye Injuries

Quinolones are some of the most popular antibiotics in the United States, treating millions of patients each year for bacterial infections and other conditions. More than 23 million patients received quinolone antibiotics in 2011. These antibiotics are often prescribed to treat severe and unusual bacterial infections like urinary tract infections, respiratory, and ear infections. However, these drugs have been recently linked to a number of severe eye injury side effects, like uveitis and retinal detachment.

In fact, recent research suggests that patients who use Avelox may be five times more likely to suffer uveitis and pigment dispersion syndrome when compared to other drug users. This study was published in the October 2014 issue of JAMA Ophthalmology, and had also found that Cipro significantly increased the risk of quinolone eye injury as well. According to the authors, patients who had used Avelox were at higher risk of suffering retinal detachment, with each of these patients suffering severe vision damage. If not treated quickly, detached retina can lead to permanent blindness.

It is important to note that retinal detachment is a symptom of uveitis. Uveitis is a condition when the uvea of the eye, the middle layer that consists the iris, ciliary body, and choroid, becomes swollen and painful. It is a common eye problem that affects more than 300,000 patients per year in the United States and is estimated to cause about 10 percent of new blindness cases each year. This is highly concerning for the prescribing physicians and the many patients who used quinolone antiobiotics, as it is the third leading cause of blindness.

Another common eye injury associated with quinolone antibiotics is pigment dispersion syndrome, which causes the pigment of the iris to slowly fade. This condition occurs due to the pigment color slowly draining into the clear fluid in the front of the eye, further compounding the situation. The pigment fluid obstructs the drainage canal of the eye, which causes fluid pressure to build up and lead to other eye injury issues like pigmentary glaucoma. Patients report the symptoms becoming worse during moments of intense physical activity.

Despite the severity of these complications, not many patients are aware of their association with quinolone antibiotics. Once discovered, many patients who suffered these side effects file quinolone eye injury lawsuits against the manufacturing companies for failing to protect them against the dangers of their products.