Levaquin and prescribed medication

I am a physician and have prescribed levaquin to many people. I have had some of them complain of what they thought were serious and variable side effects but mostly I attributed their problems to anxiety and hypochondiasis. I now know differently. I took levaquin, and for over a year I have had serious CNS anxiety, insomnia, joint and tendon pain, and widespread peripheral neuropathy. It has been an awful time and since realizing that the effects are often long term I have been able to identify many other patients who have developed serious long term problems with anxiety, depression, arthropathy and tendonopathy, neuropathy and possibly endocrine effects like gonadal failure and worsening of diabetes. There are no long term studies done post marketing to identify these effects and to unify all of these problems into one syndrom of fluoroquinolone toxicity. This is a big problem and I believe thousands of patients have been adversely affected by the use and misuse of levaquin and probably the other fluoroquinolone antibiotics. I have other colleagues who are beginning to recognize the long term consequences of levaquin and the fluoroquinolones. More research and study needs to be done. In the mean time I am sure that Johnson and Johnson, Ortho- Mcneil, will continue to refute that the incidence of serious adverse reactions is much higher than they report.

I was precribed levequin on March 5th 2005 and begun my treatment on the following day for sinus infections. This is the worst i ever felt from being on some sort of prescribed medication. This drug made me feel like i was not in touch with the wrld and i felt like i was on clound nine all day. I sat in a daze in my office trying to figure out what was going on. I begun to experience pain in my neck and unrest and nauseua. Today will be the last day that i take this medications. I just hope that i did not wait to long to stop taking it.