A Wills Newsletter

Daily Mail 29.12.20  “WHY COMMON ANTIBIOTICS MAY TRIGGER MENTAL BREAKDOWNS”  By Pat Hagan.

Becky Goodwin, 30, waved goodbye to her husband & children as they went for a walk, but as soon as they’d gone she contemplated killing herself.  Her story is not one of gradual psychiatric decline - she went from a happy, healthy wife & mother to being consumed by hopelessness in just 3 months, owing - she believes – to the prescribed antibiotic doxycycline.  Earlier in 2020 Alana Cutland, 19-year-old Cambridge Uni student, jumped to her death after taking doxycycline for 11 days.  At the inquest, Coroner Tom Osborne concluded that the drug was to blame.  He had consulted experts investigating doxycycline’s effects on mental health.  In Nov .2020, Mr Osborne wrote to the  MHRA safety body, asking it to do a review of doxycycline & the risk of suicidal thoughts. They are now probing this. Scientists at Augusta Uni in Georgia USA, carried out one of the largest studies on this.  They trawled though 8 years of data from FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System.  The study found over 6,000 reports of side-effects of all kinds from doxycycline -  91 included psychosis or hallucinations.  Doxycycline was not the only antibiotic linked with sudden & severe psychiatric problems.  At least 14 other antibiotics showed an increased risk of these.  Included was a class of the drugs called FLUOROQUINOLONES (containing fluoride) previously highlighted for tendon damage, joint pain & memory loss.  These drugs include floxacin & levofloxacin.  The US study revealed 1,122 cases of psychosis in patients on fluoroquinolones - more than double the number seen with minocycline, a drug widely used for acne.  The worse was clarithromycin antibiotic, used for chest & ear infections.  Of 18,000 adverse events reported from it, about 700 involved psychotic episodes.  One theory is that the drugs trigger interactions with neurotransmitter brain chemicals. Prof David Healy, a psychiatrist consulted in the Alana Cutland case, first raised concerns about potential harmful effects of doxycycline in 2013, when he was professor of psychiatry at Bangor Uni.