New Delhi:
The risk of abnormal heart rhythm is not increased by consuming antibiotic azithromycin, according to a new study.
Drug Azithromycin is used to treat respiratory and urinary tract infections. It belongs to class of drug called macrolides. Erythromycin is the another type of macrolide that can disrupt the heart's normal rhythm and has been linked to dangerous heart condition called ventricular arrythmia.
Well there has been conflicting conclusions according to recent studies about whether azithromycin is also linked to increased risk of death from that condition.
More than 14 million new antibiotic users' data was studied upon by the researchers. The patients were from Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The study found that 0.1 percent developed ventricular arrhythmia. Only 30 of those patients were new users of azithromycin.
Azithromycin users were not any more likely to develop ventricular arrhythmia than those who preferred another widely used antibiotic aoxicillin. Amoxicillin is a penicillin drug. However the users of azithromycin were at higher risk than those who were non users according to the study.
Findings from the study were published April 18 in the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
"This finding suggests that the risk of ventricular arrhythmia is more likely to be due to a person's poor health and caused by their infection, rather than to azithromycin itself," study author Dr. Gianluca Trifiro, from the University of Messina in Italy, said in a journal news release.
