Also in 2001 Jay Cox of the University of California, San Diego, published research demonstrating the potential of fluoroquinolones to cause peripheral neuropathy.
The most recent researched, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April, linked fluoroquinolones to retinal detachment, which can cause temporary or permanent blindness.
The researchers associated increases in multidrug-resistant MRSA in the hospital with excessive use of two specific classes of antibiotics often prescribed to treat pneumonia (fluoroquinolones) and offered as a substitute for patients allergic to penicillin (macrolides).