Victims of a 'killer' antibiotic: Mother, 44, suffers stroke and is left ... trends now
An actor left with arthritis, a man so weak his wife has to help him get dressed and a mother-of-two left partially deaf and wearing hearing aids aged 36.
These are just some of the victims of a disabling reaction to antibiotics designed to improve their health. Instead, the drugs left them with irreversible side-effects that continue to wreck their lives.
Antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones, used to treat a number of bacterial infections including pneumonia and gastroenteritis, have long been associated with serious risks of tissue ruptures, affecting muscles and blood vessels.
Such is the potential for harm that the FDA has said that the drugs should only be prescribed for some conditions when there are no other treatment options.
However, DailyMail.com has learned that this is far from the reality - with around 15 million Americans still prescribed them each year, according to the CDC.
Doctors have told this website that fluoroquinolones such as ciprofloxacin are still being prescribed freely to patients with low-risk infections who could easily be given an alternative.
Rick Zingale, 61, was given an IV drip of the fluoroquinolone levofloxacin to treat what was thought to be a bacterial lung infection
Meanwhile, patients have told of the heartbreaking effects of the 'killer' antibiotics on their lives - including some for who the drug triggered a deadly stroke.
The FDA has received reports of hundreds of thousands of serious adverse events associated with fluoroquinolones from more than 60,000 patients since the 1980s.
One recent victim is actor Rick Zingale, 61, from New Jersey, who was admitted to the hospital in 2022 suffering what doctors believed to be bronchitis and pneumonia.
Zingale was given an IV drip of the fluoroquinolone levofloxacin to treat what was thought to be a bacterial lung infection.
However, he later discovered that he was in fact suffering heart failure, meaning the antibiotics were fruitless.
Worse, the drugs left with life-changing complications. He developed a red, inflamed mass bulging out of his right collarbone, and suffers pains which, 'shoots down the neck and the right arm.' He added that he also suffers arthritis in his right hand, which he believes is linked to the drug.
'It was scary as hell,' he told DailyMail.com.
'I'm defeated... because I have these horrible symptoms and I don't know what's going on... I'm absolutely distraught.'
Zingale has developed a red, inflamed mass bulging out of his right collarbone, and suffers pains which 'shoot down the neck and the right arm'. He believes this is as a result of an antibiotic he was administered in 2022
Mindy with her family shortly before the vertebral dissection occurred, which she believes is due to the Cipro she was prescribed
Another victim is Mindy Tautfest (above), 44, from Oklahoma City. In 2016, the former ICU nurse underwent an operation to remove her appendix, she told DailyMail.com.
Some three weeks later, doctors told her the internal stitches were infected and prescribed her a week's course of ciprofloxacin, brand name Cipro.
Mrs Tautfest was not concerned because she had many years of experience of prescribing the drug for similar infections.
But when she took it herself, something didn't seem right. 'As soon as I started taking it, I felt weird. I can't describe the weird, I just didn't feel quite right,' she said.
Just two months after she first took the drug, she suffered a vertebral artery dissection - a tear occurs in the artery that supplies the brain with blood.
In Mrs Tautfest's case, it caused a stroke.
'It was like a gunshot erupted inside my head,' she said. 'I felt the back of my head and couldn't feel any blood. That's when I realized that it was probably some type of a brain aneurysm inside my head that had ruptured.
'It was like a peeling away - I call it an electrical avalanche - that rolled down my body. It just felt horrendous.'
She calls the incident a near-death experience, and has now been left with partial hearing loss and severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Research has suggested that the side effects of fluoroquinolones are at least partially caused by damage to mitochondria - the powerhouse of the bodies' cells.
It's thought that some may have a genetic predisposition to being unable to metabolize part of the fluoroquinolone.
Another victim is John Sunderland Manousso, 85, from Texas, who visited his doctor in July 2023 for a reoccurring urinary tract infection (UTI).
Doctors prescribed him a six-day course of levofloxacin. Just two days into taking the antibiotics, he began to struggle to walk.
His wife, Barbara, told DailyMail.com: 'He said to me: "I've got knives coming up my legs."'
'He was wobbling like he's on a boat, side to side, and [was] obviously in pain.'
The pair started researching, and saw a warning sign online that said the drug should not be given to over 60s or people with motor issues.
John has previously been diagnosed with vascular parkinsonism, a condition which causes walking and balance problems and other Parkinson's movement symptoms, which they had talked about with the doctor who prescribed the antibiotic.
They called the doctor and told them John had had a bad reaction. 'He'll get over it. As soon as he stops taking it, he'll be okay,' said the doctor.
But he wasn't. A few days later, John could 'barely move' and his legs were so swollen, they had more than tripled in size.
At a gala in Newport, Rhode Island, the couple were attending a couple of weeks later, John went to get out of his chair and 'screamed.'
'We didn't know at
