These patients denounce a “health scandal”. A series of complaints should be filed during the week in Paris by a dozen patients for “unintentional injuries” allegedly caused by antibiotics prescribed without authorization, three lawyers announced on Monday in a press release, confirming information from France Info.
Me Noémie Klein, Maxime Bailly and Martin Vettes represent the interests of Philippe Coville, who already filed a complaint last October, and of a “ten other patients” who “have consumed antibiotics from the fluoroquinolone family and suffer from ‘sometimes serious and potentially irreversible side effects’.
The contours of the marketing authorization
According to this advice, “despite several alerts on their dangerousness, in particular from Philippe Coville, and the restrictions of indications that came in late in 2019 with regard to their adverse effects known for years, these antibiotics remain today massively prescribed outside the scope of the marketing authorization (MA)”. A certain number of these patients “believe that they were not informed both of the off-label prescription of the antibiotic which was issued to them but also of the adverse effects which they began to suffer immediately after their consumption”, write the lawyers again. .
All of these patients hope through these complaints for “unintentional injuries” and “aggravated deception” to obtain the opening of an investigation by the public health unit of the Paris court “in order to centralize the investigations”, while the first Philippe Coville’s complaint, filed in Paris, was, according to one of the advisers, disoriented with the Versailles court.
Fluoroquinolones to be used with caution
On its website, the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) indicates that “fluoroquinolones are a class of antibiotics which can be used during serious bacterial infections”. “Like any drug, fluoroquinolones can cause adverse effects”, warns the ANSM, referring to “damage to the nervous system”, “neuropsychiatric disorders”, “a condition of the musculoskeletal system”, but also “Very rare but serious cardiac side effects”.
Since 2018-2019, the European Medicines Agency “has reassessed” their “benefit / risk ratio”, leading in particular “to restrict their therapeutic indications and update their safety profile”, recalls the ANSM. On its website, the national agency indicates that fluoroquinolones “should only be prescribed after having carefully assessed their benefits with regard to the risks of expected adverse effects, and after having informed the patient thereof”.