Chances are your doctor doesn’t know about this or will downplay the risks if you ask about the dangers of antibiotics. Doctors prescribe antibiotics like Democrats hand out blank ballots. Before getting into details on this, if you need me to establish legitimacy to this word of caution, consider this.
Back in July 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a “black box” warning for a specific class of commonly prescribed antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. The drugs impacted by the warning include ciprofloxacin, gemifloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, norfloxacin, and ofloxacin.
Ciprofloxacin, or “Cipro,” is the most well-known of these drugs, which are still prescribed. They have not been taken off the market. So why the “black box” warning, which is the most stringent warning the FDA can attach to a drug?
For starters, one of the major side effects of this class of antibiotics is tendon pain and a very real possibility that your tendons, specifically your Achilles tendon, could rupture. But it’s not just your tendons.
A website called Drugwatch, which is a pharmaceutical watchdog organization, published the story of Mateo Rodriguez, who blamed Cipro for diagnoses of degenerative health conditions that included rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, peripheral neuropathy, and those tendon ruptures. Rodriguez now uses a wheelchair and arm and leg braces.
“He is going blind, so he wears special glasses and uses a cane to keep from falling. Without a shower chair, he can’t wash himself. Special hooks help him grab onto clothes and buttons so he can dress himself. He was hospitalized for a month for severe memory loss,” Drugwatch said, adding, “Rodriguez says the fluoroquinolone antibiotic Cipro robbed him of the promising life he had worked so hard to make for himself.”
In Rodriguez’s case, his own primary care doctor diagnosed him with “Fluoroquinolone-Associated Disability, or FQAD,” which is linked to consumption of fluoroquinolone antibiotics.
According to Drugwatch, FQAD can involve the musculoskeletal system, the neuropsychiatric system, any of your five senses, the skin, and the cardiovascular system. And your symptoms can be permanent.
Rodriguez said that his troubles started in September 2017. He was 22 years old and had just graduated from college with two degrees. Prior to graduation, he suffered from a MRSA infection that required more than 20 surgeries.
When he was prescribed Cipro, Rodriguez said that his doctor did warn him the drug could cause tendinitis but softened that warning by emphasizing that because Rodriguez was under the age of 65, complications were unlikely.
Rodriguez told Drugwatch, “I remember my exact words were, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m sure it’s very rare so I’m not worried about it.’ And within two weeks I automatically started feeling like a bomb went off in my body.”
Like countless others who’ve had the same experience, Rodriguez took to the internet only to learn a new-ish term that more people should know about – “floxing.”
The term comes from those fluoroquinolones whose names all end with “-floxacin,” as in “ciprofloxacin.” Over the years, the growing number of people who've all had common experiences after taking fluoroquinolones began to connect and share information and stories. In the end, they came up with the term. If you’re going through something like Rodriguez is, there is a chance you’ve been “floxed.”
Over the years, the FDA issued a number of warnings about fluoroquinolones, but it has also decided to keep the drugs – best known as Cipro, Levaquin, and Avelox – on the market because it has maintained that for some patients, the benefits still outweigh the risks.
Needless to say, if you think you’ve been floxed, getting a diagnosis may be the biggest part of the battle.
Last year, WFXT-TV in Boston told the story of Talia Smith, who says she took just three Cipro pills in April 2021 for a urinary tract infection. She told WFXT that she went “from healthy to hospice.” Her conditions have included severe pain and neuropathy. While battling her debilitating symptoms was a huge challenge, another challenge she faced was the lack of recognition that floxing is a thing.
Norwood woman’s fight to get ‘floxing’ diagnosis recognized by CDC pays off https://t.co/S81xsmYXS4
— Boston 25 News (@boston25) October 3, 2025
Thanks to Smith, WFXT reported that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recognized floxing as a legitimate malady.
WFXT said, “The CDC has launched a series of new ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision) codes specifically for Fluoroquinolone Poisoning. The codes are crucial for how healthcare systems document and track diseases, affecting everything from research to processing health insurance claims.”
According to the FDA, it has received 1,122 reports of fluoroquinolone-related disability, but those low numbers may be very misleading.
Someone could end up in a hospital emergency room with a torn Achilles tendon and never think to mention they had been taking Cipro of some other antibiotic. Someone could end up going through extensive neurological testing for neuropathy and never bring up to their doctors that they were on a fluoroquinolone. And, depending on the doctor or the nurse, the patient may never be questioned about antibiotic use.
Another challenge for patients is that the onset of any number of floxing-related problems can be gradual and worsen over months or even years. This makes it more difficult to pinpoint the specific cause of the problems until the person is well into health decline.
While this column is not a place to help you self-diagnose, and it’s certainly not medical advice, it is a reminder to talk to your doctor about the antibiotics he or she wants you to take. Find out if you really need them. And if at some point you end up being seen for something that you think is unrelated to those antibiotics, it’s still worth mentioning all drugs you’ve taken, including and especially antibiotics.
