This family of antibiotics has over the years shown that it can be extremely toxic to some patients. Originally the fluoroquinolones were designed as 3rd or 4th tier treatment, when other antibiotics fail or there are allergies present, but as soon as these products became available doctors started to give them out to everyone for everything.

The financial success of Cipro (by Bayer), led other Big Pharma companies scrambling to make "me-too" versions to share the wealth. Some of them were total failures, and were recalled. Omniflox lasted about 2 weeks, because it was causing death very quickly upon release. Floxin came out right after Cipro and seemed to target urology problems and right away it started to cause severe neurological side effects...sometimes with only one day's use! The book Bitter Pills was written by Stephen Fried whose wife developed seizures on this drug.

More here:
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2010/...n-cause-chaos/
I also saw an episode of Oprah on drug side effects, where this drug was featured as harming one of her producers. So today we don't see Floxin much anymore, but it is still available.

There are many many sites on the web now about this problem with this family of drugs. This blog appears to me to be very complete and offers links to other information sources including Facebook blogs:
http://www.levaquinadversesideeffect.com/
specifically on toxicity:
http://www.levaquinadversesideeffect...rom-wikipedia/

I'd like to address the doctor issue here. It appears that doctors are IGNORING patients' side effects, and this seems to be the root of the problem. It is a similar scenario that is occurring with Statin therapy for lowering cholesterol. It is unclear to me if this is because the drug companies have MISLED the doctors, or are giving erroneous information (as was done with Vioxx) or if the doctors are just lazy and not paying attention.
Instead of using these drugs as they were originally designed...for extreme risky interventions, they are being given freely as first line treatment for minor situations. And as a sad result many many people have been damaged with little hope of improvement.

And this is an interesting factoid about these drugs also involves doctors.
The tendon rupture effect that these drugs cause, was discovered by doctors who were using the drugs themselves (and probably freely given samples) and later after the treatment, often months later, ruptured their Achilles' tendons or knee tendons. Over time it was shown that the fluroquinolones cause this, and it can be delayed up a year after treatments! It is thought that using corticosteroids with the drugs accelerate these events. So in effect doctors were the first identified victims of these drugs. And one would think they would be more cautious, but that does not appear to be the case.

There are times and situations, where fluroquinolones HAVE to be used, to save a patient. So they are still available, but really the patients should be informed of the risks involved. Chronic use however, becomes very risky.

The various toxicities are listed in the above link on this post, but the peripheral neuropathy ones are the ones we see here on this forum.
Neuropathies are thought to be irreversible from these drugs. However, Dr. Jay Cohen MD has a website where a patient shared one intervention that helped him: IV glutathione treatment.
http://www.medicationsense.com/artic...cs_052205.html
Other supplement suggestions appear on this link including magnesium.

This link to Dr. Cohen has the glutathione recommendation:
http://medicationsense.com/articles/...ity070508.html

There are several other sites I found on Google now taking up the glutathione option.

Since fluoroquinolones are DNA disruptors I would also think that trying the supplements for mitochondrial damage may work to some extent also. Those include acetyl carnitine, CoQ-10, lipoic acid for starters. Mitochondria are bacteria that have been incorporated into mammalian cells, to act as an energy source. The DNA in them, is maternal and only inherited from the mother. Antibiotics that attack DNA of bacteria, may also harm OUR helping bacterial decendants, our own mitochondria.
It is a theory becoming highly accepted in the Autism research community and may pertain to PN patients as well. Only time will tell on this idea.

One last word. It is thought that using corticosteroids like prednisone, and also NSAIDs increase the risk of damage. Keep that in mind too, if you have to have a treatment using this family of antibiotics.

Edit to add a new link to a paper about antibiotics and PN. This link has a list of drugs that have been reported to cause nerve damage:
http://www.medlink.com/medlinkcontent.asp

Here is a link to a report of Levaquin unmasking a hereditary PN that was not causing symptoms before:
http://www.theannals.com/content/ear...pdf+html?rss=1

This is a Wiki link with alot of information and a large bibliography about fluoroquinolone toxicity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse...uoroquinolones

edit 2012:
Here is a new study with many patients showing up to a 5 fold increase in retinal detachments of the eye in people using these drugs:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article....icleid=1148331

edit to add: Here is a new link July 2013 article provided by our
member Marlene: Thanks to Marlene!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0703160623.htm
Actually has a photo of mito damage by Cipro!

edit to add the new FDA warning about PN and fluoroquinolones:
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm365050.htm

Edit to add:
6-4-14-- antibiotics linked to colon cancer (including Flagyl (metronidazole) and quinolones:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...usaolp00000592
this is another reason to restore yourself with Kefir if you use antibiotics.