Levofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. We discussed the side effects of such drugs on tendons.
Levofloxacin is not a simple one, but a so-called respiratory fluoroquinolone. This means that the main pathogens of pneumonia are sensitive to it, including those microbes that can hide inside cells.
It would seem that you can be happy and end there. But not everything is so good.
In fact, levofloxacin has a very specific clientele. These are elderly people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all sorts of bronchiectasis and other mechanical defects inside the lungs.
The peculiarity of such people is that they have many dense secluded places in their lungs, where not every drug can reach (levofloxacin can).
And in such secluded places intestinal microbes live, which are also not sensitive to everything, but they die from levofloxacin.
This all applies to people with chronic lung disease. You will not meet them at every step. The rest of the cases may be associated mainly with allergies, when levofloxacin is used as a substitute for other drugs.
Plus, levofloxacin is just like azithromycin from last article, knows how to provoke heart rhythm disturbances. He's not candy at all either.
Oddly enough, it is the effectiveness of levofloxacin that can give you and me the most problems. It is associated with pseudomembranous colitis and tuberculosis.
Intestinal microbes are sensitive to levofloxacin. If they lived only in bronchiectasis, it would be normal, but intestinal microbes live exactly where they should be - in the intestines.
We literally have kilograms of bacteria in our gut that can be good or bad. The good keep the bad in check, and this whole economy lives on a delicate balance.
Levofloxacin is very effective in crushing beneficial microbes in the intestines. As a result, harmful ones germinate. Worst of all, clostridium grows, which causes pseudomembranous colitis. This is such an inflammation of the intestines, from which it is quite possible to die.
Clostridia began to spoil our life especially often from about the end of the seventies of the last century. Then there were a lot of antibiotics, and Clostridia came under strict selection. As a result of selection, the microbe has become very harmful.
Another adverse effect of levofloxacin is associated with tuberculosis.
Fluoroquinolones restrain tuberculosis, its manifestations become blurred, tuberculosis patients are diagnosed late, and it can all end up sadly.
It turns out that levofloxacin will give a head start to azithromycin in its harmfulness. It is better not to contact him without a doctor's prescription.
