A woman rendered permanently disabled and wheelchair-bound after being prescribed a common antibiotic in 2021 is warning others about its side effects.
An avid runner and fitness fanatic at the time, Talia Smith, 45, was prescribed ciprofloxacin, or Cipro for short, to treat a urinary tract infection in April 2021.
What happened next felt like ‘a bomb going off’ in her body — after three pills, sharp pains like she was being electrocuted shot up from her feet to her legs.
Her muscles became so stiff that she couldn’t move. She went to the hospital but claims doctors sent her home and told her to take ibuprofen.
Eventually, she could no longer shower by herself or chew and swallow food unless it was pureed first. Because of her own complex health needs and those of her husband, a disabled veteran, they can no longer live in the same home.
When Smith’s story first broke, it inspired more Americans to come forward with their harrowing experiences on Cipro.
Yet, the drug continued to be prescribed to millions of Americans every year without doctors warning about its links to a devastating condition that causes irreparable nerve damage.
But now, almost four years on, the CDC will now formally recognize the side effect known colloquially as ‘floxing.’
Talia Smith, pictured with her husband (left), was active and healthy before being prescribed Cipro to treat a UTI – now she’s disabled and needs constant care
When Mrs Smith moved into hospice care she couldn’t swallow solid food, walk on her own, or lift her arms over her head
Fluoroquinolones, whether taken by mouth or inhaled, can cause serious side effects that may be disabling, long-lasting, and possibly permanent. These side effects are estimated to affect at least 1 to 10 people out of every 10,000 who use these medications.
Using her harrowing health journey as a catalyst for advocacy, Smith and doctors successfully pressed the CDC to get the condition officially recognized as a diagnosable, reportable condition, helping to bring more awareness to the issue and making it easier to track. That policy came into effect in July 2024.
The CDC’s formal recognition was ‘something like landing on the moon,’ according to Dr Stefan Pieper, who has treated around 1,500 patients with fluoroquinolone poisoning at his practice in Germany and presented the proposal to the CDC.
Smith says in her case, she asked her doctor about the drug’s possible side effects and its strength but was told the medication was safe and widely prescribed.
However, the doctor did not mention the FDA‘s series of Black Box warnings, the first being issued in 2008, about the risks of tendonitis, nerve damage causing numbness, pain and tingling, seizures, tremors, and several others.
Mrs Smith said: ‘I took the antibiotic. Three pills in, I couldn’t walk. I started having pains all over my body. My vision actually changed in this time. I had problems swallowing.’
Fluoroquinolones, the class of antibiotics to which Cipro belongs, comes with a laundry list of potentially devastating side effects from tendon rupture and muscle wasting to nerve damage and aortic tears. Despite the risks, it’s prescribed to roughly 15 million Americans every year.
When Mrs Smith went to her local emergency department in Norwood, Massachusetts, one of the first questions a doctor asked her was, ‘Are you taking Cipro?’
It was then that she learned of the Black Box warnings, the most stringent the FDA could hand down, and that many of her symptoms were there – tremors, sharp, shooting pains, dizziness, and muscle weakness.
Though she stopped taking the medicine after two days, the damage was done.
She got worse by the week.
Prior to taking Cipro, Mrs Smith (pictured left, with her sister) exercised regularly and seldom needed medication. She rarely fell ill and only visited the doctor for her annual checkups
Five months later, she was in hospice care, weighing 60 lbs.
‘The nerve pain was ridiculous, just constant nerve pain,’ she said.
She added: ‘And as for my life, it’s flipped upside down. I can’t even take care of myself. I’m on palliative care. I need care 24/7.’
Cipro is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, and while it targets harmful bacteria, it can also target human cells, including nerve cells.
It can interfere with the function of mitochondria in cells, which govern energy production and cellular repair. Stress on cells harms nerves, disrupting their normal signaling pathways.
It can also affect how nerves send signals by interfering with tiny pathways, called ion channels, that help nerves communicate. This disruption can cause unusual sensations, like pain or tingling.
Mrs Smith working out before her reaction
Previously a caregiver to her veteran husband, Mrs Smith was forced to stop when her own debilitating illness emerged, resulting in the couple living apart
The FDA has received reports of hundreds of thousands of serious adverse events associated with fluoroquinolones from more than 60,000 patients since the 1980s.
One recent case involves 61-year-old actor Rick Zingale from New Jersey, who played Don Miguel in Rambo: Last Blood (2019). In 2022, he was hospitalized with symptoms doctors initially believed to be bronchitis and pneumonia.
Zingale was given an IV drip of the fluoroquinolone antibiotic levofloxacin to treat what was thought to be a bacterial lung infection. However, he later learned that he was actually suffering from heart failure, making the antibiotics ineffective.
Unfortunately, the drugs caused him life-altering complications. He developed a red, swollen mass near his right collarbone and experiences pain that ‘shoots down’ his neck and right arm. Additionally, he has developed arthritis in his right hand, which he believes is linked to the medication.
He said: ‘I’m defeated… because I have these horrible symptoms and I don’t know what’s going on… I’m absolutely distraught.’
Another person affected is 44-year-old Mindy Tautfest from Oklahoma City.
In 2016, the former ICU nurse had surgery to remove her appendix, she shared with DailyMail.com.
About three weeks later, doctors informed her that the internal stitches had become infected and prescribed a week-long course of ciprofloxacin, also known as Cipro.
With her extensive experience in prescribing this drug for similar infections, Mrs. Tautfest wasn’t initially concerned. However, after starting the medication, she began feeling unusually off. “I can’t describe the weird feeling, I just didn’t feel quite right,” she explained.
Just two months after beginning the drug, she suffered a vertebral artery dissection, which is a tear in the artery that supplies blood to the brain. Unfortunately, in her case, it led to a stroke.
Mindy Tautfest with her family shortly before the vertebral dissection occurred, which she believes is due to the Cipro she was prescribed
‘It was like a gunshot erupted inside my head,’ she said.
‘I felt the back of my head and couldn’t feel any blood. That’s when I realized that it was probably some type of a brain aneurysm inside my head that had ruptured.
‘It was like a peeling away – I call it an electrical avalanche – that rolled down my body. It just felt horrendous.’
Another one of many affected is 85-year-old John Sunderland Manousso from Texas, who visited his doctor in July 2023 for a recurring urinary tract infection (UTI).
His doctor prescribed a six-day course of levofloxacin. Just two days into taking the antibiotic, John began having difficulty walking.
His wife, Barbara, explained to DailyMail.com: ‘He said to me: “I’ve got knives coming up my legs.”’
‘He was wobbling like he’s on a boat, side to side, and obviously in pain.’
The couple began researching online and found a warning that the drug should not be given to people over 60 or those with motor issues. John had been diagnosed with vascular parkinsonism, which affects walking and balance, a condition they had discussed with the doctor before the prescription.
John Sunderland was previously an avid runner. His wife told DailyMail.com his legs tripled in size due to being so swollen after he took the antibiotic
John now cannot get around without a walker, and has been left with ‘terrible pain and balance issues’ which have caused falls, including one in which he tore his rotator cuff
They contacted the doctor, who assured them that the side effects would go away once John stopped taking the drug.
But things got worse. A few days later, John could ‘barely move,’ and his legs had swollen to more than three times their normal size.
At a gala in Newport, Rhode Island, a couple of weeks later, when John tried to stand up, he ‘screamed.’ It turned out that the tendon in his right leg had torn.
Tendon ruptures are a known side effect of fluoroquinolones.
Now, John can no longer walk without a walker and is dealing with “terrible pain and balance issues,” which have caused several falls, including one in which he tore his rotator cuff.
Doctors are prescribing Cipro less frequently than other antibiotics because of the life-altering consequences.
Overusing Cipro has also led to some bacteria becoming resistant to it, making infections caused by those bacteria harder to treat in the future. Better alternatives exist for common conditions, including UTIs and lung infections.
Mrs Smith said: ‘Make sure you actually need an antibiotic before taking one.
‘Antibiotics in the United States are so overprescribed and we’re very used to taking them if a doctor tells you a medication is safe. Double check, triple check, just to be sure.’