(Image source from: Medical News Today)

Some of the antibiotics you’ve been prescribed can merely relieve your ill health for some time as it has some fatal side-effects. Researchers have found a connection between two types of heart problems - aortic and mitral regurgitation - and one of the most commonly prescribed classes of antibiotics.

The research team, in a study published in in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, said that users of fluoroquinolone antibiotics, such as Ciprofloxacin or Cipro, are 2.4 times at a greater risk of developing aortic and mitral regurgitation compared to patients who take amoxicillin, a different type of antibiotic.

Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are commonly used to treat a variety of illnesses such as respiratory and urinary tract infections.  

Read: Difference Between a Heart Attack and Cardiac Arrest

According to researchers, the greater risk is within 30 days of use of these antibiotics. Though this class of antibiotics is very convenient, in the majority of the cases especially community-related infections, they’re allegedly not really needed.  

Study’s lead author Mahyar Etminan, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, said the research team analyzed data from the United States Food and Drug administration’s adverse reporting system.

For the study, the research team picked out 12,505 cases of valvular regurgitation with 125,020 case-control subjects in a random sample of more than nine million patients.

Compared fluoroquinolone use with amoxicillin and azithromycin, the researchers defined the current fluoroquinolone exposure as an active prescription or 30 days before the adverse consequence, recent exposure as within 31 to 60 days, and past exposure as within 61 to 365 days prior to an incident.

As per results, the risk of aortic and mitral regurgitation, a backflow of blood caused by the failure of the heart's mitral valve to close tightly.  

This study ultimately highlights the need to be thoughtful when prescribing antibiotics, which can sometimes turn harmful.

By Sowmya Sangam