Study Reveals Most Common Antibiotic May Cause Hallucinations and Seizures

The most common line of defense when patients have bacterial infections is antibiotics. These are given to treat the patients' infections and other symptoms the infection has brought about.

Health practitioners are always on the look-out for those bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. However, looks like there is another thing experts should be concerned about. There is reason to believe that the most common antibiotics may be the cause of delirium and some other serious brain problems.

A new study that observed 391 patients who were given long term antibiotics were done and has revealed that these patients have shown signs of delirium and other brain problems. According to medicaldaily.com, researchers studied at least 54 kinds of antibiotic from the most common penicillin to IV antibiotics like cefepime.

Through electroencephalogram (EEG), it was discovered that 70% of the cases had abnormal brain activity. 47% had delusions and hallucinations, 14% were experiencing seizures, 15% were suffering from involuntary twitching of the muscles, and 5% don't have control of their movements anymore.

Dr. Shamik Bhattacharyya and colleagues from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, categorized the symptoms they found into three kinds. First is seizure which happened a few days after the initial dose was mostly linked to penicillin and cephalosporins. It was especially common to those patients suffering from kidney failure.

Another surprising discovery was that cefepime, an intravenous antibiotic, was also associated with seizures. The second kind was psychosis also happened just days after the patient has taken the drug, but usually when psychosis happens, seizure is absent. And the last one where patients have different findings in the cerebellum of the patient is believed to be linked with Metronidazole (Flagyl) weeks after it was first used, forbes.com reported.

"More research is needed, but theses antibiotics should be considered as a possible cause of delerium," Battacharyya said. "Recognition of different patterns of toxicity could lead to a quicker diagnosis and hopefully prevent some of the negative consequences for people with delirium and other brain problems."

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