They denounce ahealth scandal“and highlight serious adverse effects. Patients who are victims of fluoroquinolones, this family of powerful antibiotics, have lodged a complaint with the Paris public health center and the Versailles prosecutor’s office, according to an info from France info.
The lawyers Noémie Klein, Maxime Bailly and Martin Vettes represent the interests of Philippe Coville, who already filed a complaint last October, and of a “ten other patients” Who “have consumed antibiotics from the fluoroquinolone family and suffer sometimes serious side effects and potentially irreversible.
According to these tips,despite several alerts on their dangerousness, in particular from Mr. Coville, and the restrictions of indications that came in late in 2019 with regard to their adverse effects known for years, these antibiotics are still massively prescribed today outside the scope of the marketing authorization (AMM)“.
Patients “consider that they were not informed both of the off-label prescription of the antibiotic that was issued to them but also of the adverse effects of which they began to suffer immediately after their consumption“, write the lawyers again.
He will be upset, Ciflox or Tavanic
These patients hope through these complaints of “unintentional injuries” and “aggravated deception” obtain the opening of an investigation by the Public Health Department of the Paris Court of Justice”to centralize investigations“.
He will be upset, Ciflox or Tavanic: les fluoroquinolones “are a class of antibiotics that can be used in severe bacterial infections“, indicates on its site the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM).
“Like all medicines, fluoroquinolones can cause side effects.“, notes the ANSM, referring to “damage to the nervous system”, “neuro-psychiatric disorders”, “a condition of the musculoskeletal system”, or even “very rare but serious cardiac adverse effects”.
Since 2018-2019, the European Medicines Agency “has reassessed” their “benefit/risk ratio”, leading in particular “to restrict their therapeutic indications and update their safety profile”recalls the ANSM.
Les fluoroquinolones “should only be prescribed after carefully weighing their benefits against the expected risks of adverse effects, and after informing the patient“, specifies the national agency.
Several letters
Contacted, the Directorate General for Health (DGS) indicates that following the European reassessment, “healthcare professionals received several emails about side effects related to fluoroquinolones”.
She published a thematic file on her site, asked that messages appear in the prescription assistance software and that the council of the order of pharmacists alert all pharmacies, she recalls.
“Other actions are being developed by the ANSM, in conjunction with learned societies and patient associations“, whose sending “a mailing aimed at all healthcare professionals who can prescribe these antibiotics“, adds this direction of the Ministry of Health.
“In France, doctors benefit from a freedom of prescription. They therefore have the possibility of prescribing a drug outside its marketing authorization”, she notes. But this prescription”imposes informed information of the patient on the absence of coverage by health insurance if necessary, and on the benefits and the risks incurred.
Also contacted by AFP, the Council of the Order of Physicians indicated that they did not have “of regard or a priori control over the prescriptions of doctors”.