~MEDICATIONS~~ That May Cause Peripheral Neuropathy
 

This topic is becoming huge. I can recall lists from a decade ago that had just a few known drugs on them, but that has changed today.

This change is because of the widening of research into mitochondria and how damage to these energy cells in our bodies leads to disorders and disease. The autism community is heavily now into this, and has its own results and therefore its own lists of offending drugs.
Often the autism lists do not contain all of the same drugs the PN lists do. Yet.

I made this post a year ago, based on an article from Science News which explains mitochondria with pictures.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...t=mitochondria

Please read this link first, so you will have a foundation for the rest of this topic.

This post will be growing all day today, as I work on it.

Basically the drugs that are the most obvious as culprits to damaging nerves and therefore causing PN to occur are DNA disrupters. Statins, chemo drugs, some antibiotics, are the most common. But a search on this topic today, found that psychiatric drugs also damage mitochondria.

This article claims that many drugs are capable of doing this damage:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18626887

The readers here can search this topic on their own, if interested. It is quite large, and growing by the day. Use keywords such as "medication induced mitochondrial damage" or "mitochondrial damage from drugs" .

When mitochondrial damage occurs those cells cannot function normally any longer. When nerve cells are affected, then pain, and odd sensations may be the result.

Later today I will put up some lists I found of drugs (not including all the suspected ones from the PubMed list above).
There are drugs with a long history of causing nerve damage, and those lists are more cemented in fact, not suspicion.

Some of the drugs will get their own posts in this thread, because information on them, is available now. Statins, and fluoroquinolone antibiotics will have their own posts.

The small list below came from Wrong Diagnosis.com which has changed its format/name and no longer provides lists of drugs as possible causes of PN.
Some of the drugs are not used much anymore:
Chlorpropamide (type II diabetes and out of favor)
Clofribrate (but the other fibrates are still used)
Glutethimide (no longer used for insomnia)
Chloramphenicol (not in US and only for rare infections)
phenylbutazone (previously for arthritis--currently contaminants from China in herbs)
Clioquinol (not in US as oral, previously called Vioform--depletes B12 severely causing death and blindness and major damage to spinal cord)

The fluroquinolones do not appear on this list, or the other statins. So it is incomplete in that respect. It also has amitriptyline on it because some older sites listed this drug as an axonal cause of PN. This may be due to dosing, and may be a carry over from the high dose antidepressant days. Amitriptyline is now used in low dose for most PNs still.

The amino acids are sometimes listed as possible aids, are most likely lysine and carnitine. I have a post about carnitine on the Supplement thread here on this forum.

This is an interesting link. It describes how mitochondria tests are done:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Ne...y/25020801.asp

(notice it does not say it tested ALL statins, so it remains unclear that only the 3 listed are culprits so far.) However, it does illustrate that "idiopathic" may mean "drug induced" or toxin induced....and we just don't have all the data yet on all the drugs which might be causative. I think all drugs should be suspect until proven otherwise. You may definitely need some drugs (like Coumadin) and some blood pressure drugs. But rotating them, or replacing them, may reveal a PN change and discussing this with your doctor might be helpful.

I have amended this thread further down with other lists I have subsequently found concerning drug damage in PN.
Post #17 here has some links that provide partial lists.
It is very difficult to find up to date information on this topic. There are posts scattered on this thread with new drugs that have reported PN as a side effect.

edit to add:
I found this link with a list of antibiotic drugs explaining their negative impact on nerves:
www.medlink.com/web_content/MLT002IE.asp
This link requires you to put in a keyword in the upper left, to see the
separate papers. For antibiotics put in fluoroquinolone in that
keyword box and the first paper is the antibiotic one.
That site has a strict copyright rule, so we cannot copy information from there to here.

edit to add-- here is a link explaining chemo and other drug induced damage and PN...
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology...hy/Cancer.html

edit to add: 6-12-13-- this comprehensive article on drug induced neuropathies... I haven't read it all yet...but will soon.
Here is the link:
http://www.neuropathy.org/site/DocSe...pdf?docID=1604 This article appears to be old, since newer drugs are not appearing on the lists.
(fluoroquinolones).

Fluoroquinolone antibiotics~ Cipro, Levaquin, Avelox and others:
 

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.

Zyvox (linazoilid)
 

I want to add in another antibiotic which we feel contributed greatly to John's PN. He was on this drug for about two and half months, but PN has been known to happen while on a short course of this drug. This drug is not used much because they don't want it to be resistant to bugs. It's more of a last resort antibiotic. And, it costs an arm and a leg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linezolid

If you read all of this, you'll see it too disrupts the mitochondia.

How to report a drug:
 

It takes many many years or a catastrophic event (like happened in Japan with clioquinol) to identify a drug as a cause of PN.

When drugs are still on patent, often this information is suppressed by the companies themselves.

I think ALL drugs are capable of causing negative reactions in some people. It depends on how well they metabolize the drug and their own particular genetic chemistries.
There are forms available at the FDA... Medwatch where you can report this. Also at Patientsville.com

http://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch/h...ms/default.htm

and
http://patientsville.com/medication/...de_effects.htm

Statins (for lowering cholesterol)
 

The information about this family of drugs is very abundant now.

There are two aspects to this problem as I see it.

1) Does cholesterol really matter? What exactly is high?

2) What do these drugs really do to your body?

This post is going to focus on #1. I will make another post to provide some information on #2.

The best place to start is with the doctors around the world who do not believe in the Cholesterol Myth. This list is growing as I type this, and finding information about it is easier than it once was. The book, Cholesterol Myths, by this doctor:
http://www.ravnskov.nu/uffe.htm

As you can see by his biography he is a busy man!

Here is a very good YouTube to start this subject:
I post it often, because it is simple, logical and gets to the point quickly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8SSCNaaDcE

The doctor on that video is Dr. Malcolm Kendrick MD.
http://www.spacedoc.net/malcolm_kendrick_cholesterol

Basically there are doctors around the world questioning the Cholesterol hypothesis today.

So the first question we often see on these boards is "what is high?" and "should I take the statin suggested by my doctor"?.
These decisions cannot be totally answered here. It is a personal decision one should make after getting information on both sides of this issue. In US it is a RARE doctor who will give you the "down side" of statin therapy. That is because the drug companies have made so many billions of dollars with these drugs they jealously guard negative information about them. This is less so internationally and US doctors may be unaware of many aspects that international doctors understand.

There are some US doctors who are skeptical of statins. They may use them for treatment, but do so carefully, and monitor their patients well. But I think they are in the vast minority.

Dr. Jay Cohen MD relates a study on his website that explains how common it is for US doctors to IGNORE patient complaints of side effects from these drugs:

http://www.medicationsense.com/artic...cts012108.html

Also Dr. Graveline MD who is a former astronaut had significant problems with his Lipitor medication, and as a result he has written a book and developed a website about this problem.
http://www.spacedoc.net/

Also consider that there are lifestyles coming forward that lead to elevated cholesterol levels. This video is very new and from Univ. California medical schools, about the dangers of Fructose in our diet.
It is a long video, but in the middle when the speaker gets to the biochemistry of fructose... he shows how this sugar leads to elevated cholesterol, because of its metabolism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

So, to start off, I really suggest readers here deal with this first aspect of treatment. The links I have above are long, complex and give other links to MORE information. So I won't repeat that here. Please take the time to research your situation, and copy and take to your doctor the information that you want your doctor to consider before you start a statin regimen.

Edit -- 2-128-12--
The FDA finally adds warnings to statin drugs...may cause elevated
blood sugars and memory loss:
from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/op...tin-users.html

More warnings will follow I predict!

Edit to add: This is a very interesting read. It provides statistical input on the real effects of statins:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/w...ally_work.html
For those thinking about discontinuing their statin, or whether to take one offered, please read this paper. It may help you decide and give you something to discuss with your doctor.

Here is a link to an abstract from a Government study on statin use causing PN:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread179295.html
new edit~~
FDA encourages lower doses of simvastatin (Zocor)
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun...tatin-20110609
Edit --Thanks to Alffe today for this link: 5-14-13--
explaining how statins damage nerves, complete with photos:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0510150143.htm

Edit 7-25-13:
Harm vs benefit for statins, new statistics:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post1002533-6.html

Olsen at PD forum keeps up with the research and is a very
good resource for us too.

Edit 11-14-13 -- this link is a new thread with many new links about the dangers of statin therapy to lower cholesterol. Please check all the pages out, as there are very important points of view becoming available now.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread197080.html

One of our posters, Wide-O....found the patent information from Merck for the combo product lovastatin + CoQ-10... here is the link with the information:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/post1040312-4.html
This patent was never used, because Merck could not solve the solubility problem that CoQ-10 has...so they kept this secret for about a decade. But the information did leak out eventually. But doctors remained clueless all that time while statins were damaging people!

NEW ~~ Statins may lower vaccine effectiveness. This article is about flu vaccine:

http://news.yahoo.com/popular-choles...161903662.html

I have had adverse reactions to Lipitor (my doc is sold on its benefits, but not receptive to the literature on its negatives) from the first month on it and demanded that my doc switch me to a non-statin, if she really felt it necessary for me to have low cholest. numbers.
I recommended Zetia (suggested to me, by MrsD) and have had success with it for about 4-5 years, now. My Rx insurance plan continues to try to get me to switch to a lower cost statin, and I have to get my doc to submit a waiver for me, about every 6-12 mos.- but I won't go back on a statin.

Are Statins safe?
 

Here are some new statistics on the value of statins (not as high as one would think), vs the actual risk of damage from them:

http://www.naturalnews.com/028988_st...e_effects.html

Statins and the elderly:
 

http://www.cmellc.com/geriatrictimes/g040618.html

explains mitochondrial damage in the elderly from statins.

Statins and the heart: 2009 study showing effects on heart muscle:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/...heart-function

Also this is interesting... a "new" name for statin muscle symtoms?

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/new...gia-rheumatica
The elderly are now being diagnosed with this condition today.

In Europe the first links to interstitial lung disease was found a couple of years ago ..but US lagged in reporting. Here is a 2012 paper from US about it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22246178
and
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/conten....201108-1574OC
Something to think about if you are a smoker.

More on pulmonary fibrosis: The statistics are amazing!
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/02/22/i...ce-by-doctors/

I have PN from my quinolone reaction. It has bee over a year and a half in it still progresses so I believe it must have an autoimmune characteristic. On the glutathione I would suggest avoiding it and also mega supplementation especially ALA which causes its own problems over time. I have tried all of the above and more and wish I had done nothing and just let my body do its work to heal with maybe some very basic supplementation. There is not majic answer, we have been screwed over by our own system and doctors who practice lazy medicine. Warn your loved ones and try to endure and time may bless you with some healing.