Question:
Can the side effects of Tequin cause someone to be wrongly diagnosed with diabetes?
Answer:
The antibiotic gatifloxacin (Tequin) is capable of causing changes in blood sugar in either direction. Usually this does not happen, and when it does occur, it almost always happens in a person who already has diabetes, not a person who does not have true diabetes. However, high blood sugar levels have occurred in several people who did not have evidence of diabetes outside of the time they were receiving the antibiotic. This February, the Food and Drug Administration issued a safety alert about blood sugar complications from gatifloxacin and a new restriction was placed on the medication advising against ever using the drug in people with diabetes.
This medicine is in the same drug family as several other antibiotics — other examples are ciprofloxacin (Cipro), moxifloxacin (Avelox), and levofloxacin (Levaquin). All of these antibiotics can change blood sugar, but gatifloxacin appears to cause this problem more often than the other drugs in its class.
Some experts believe that this medicine can alter blood sugar levels by changing the way that potassium and calcium cross in and out of cells within the pancreas. This can change the amount of insulin that is naturally secreted by the pancreas, and can abruptly change the sugar.
Both high and low blood sugars can be dangerous. When low blood sugar occurs after the use of this antibiotic, the problem can be dramatic and several deaths have occurred. The people at highest risk for this complication have been older adults with reduced kidney function, especially if they take glyburide (Micronase, Diabeta) to control diabetes.
