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Antibiotics *Causing* Meningitis

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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In what seems to be a complete reversal of intended cause / effect, it turns out that an antibiotic can actually serve as the cause of a serious condition typically associated with an infection such antibiotics are supposed to fight.

In the case this article describes, a man was diagnosed with meningitis three times after taking the antibiotic amoxicillin as a prescribed precaution (without already suffering from an infection).

A Man Took Antibiotics Before Going to the Dentist. He Developed An Ultra-Rare Brain Side Effect
As scary as it may sound, a root canal is a fairly routine dental procedure. But for one 60-year-old man, the procedure turned life threatening when he developed meningitis, a swelling of the tissue surrounding his brain and spinal cord. Even more surprising, though, was that this dangerous outcome wasn't due to some ghastly slip of the dentist's drill or a germ-coated dental instrument. ...

But several days after the procedure, the man arrived at an emergency room in New Jersey with a fever, headaches and neck pain. He informed doctors of his recent root canal and also mentioned that his dentist had instructed him to take amoxicillin — a common antibiotic — several days before the procedure.

Because of his symptoms, doctors suspected he had meningitis, which is almost always caused by an infection of some kind. So, they started him on antibiotics, but he only got worse. ...

That's when the doctors treating him suspected he might have drug-induced meningitis, or symptoms of meningitis that are triggered not by an infection, but by a specific drug. And in this case, the drug was amoxicillin.

Such a side effect is very rare, said Dr. Maria Nagori, an infectious-disease doctor at Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who treated the patient in 2017. ...

Indeed, upon further research, Nagori found that only about a dozen cases of amoxicillin-induced meningitis had ever been reported. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63772-root-canal-antibiotics-meningitis.html
 
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