Will nitroxiline help a throat infection?
September 8, 2007 8:02 AM   Subscribe

Can nitroxoline be used to treat a throat infection? Will it do anything to help?

My girlfriend lost her voice over the last couple days and can barely speak now, she says its very sore as well. Neither of us has health insurance, but her mother has sent her a bottle of ukrainian pills that she says will help. I can't read the bottle except for nitroxoline 50mg. Google says they're used for urinary tract infections.

My girlfriend wants to take them, are they going to do
anything? She says "they can't hurt." Is she right? is "an antibiotic is an antibiotic"?
posted by ndrw to Health & Fitness (11 answers total)
 
Does she actually have an infection, caused by bacteria? Not a viral infection, or a bad case of post-nasal drip? This isn't really something you can diagnose on your own, unless she's had the exact same thing before and been given antibiotics before, and antibiotics should, for the love of science, only be used against bacterial infections.

Lots of drug stores in the US (don't know your location) have places like the 'Minute Clinic'. I would recommend going and getting a strep culture done, because it is important to get antibiotics if she has strep, but it's pointless to take them if it's viral or just irritation.

And apparently what you have there is both an antibiotic and an antifungal. Huh.
posted by cobaltnine at 8:17 AM on September 8, 2007


Of course it can hurt, ndrw. There are so many reasons not to take those pills that I wouldn't know where to start.

To answer your direct question; no, all antibiotics are not the same.

Do you even know if your girlfriend has a bacterial infection? For gods sake at least go to a free clinic and find out.
posted by Justinian at 8:22 AM on September 8, 2007


Jesus. I just read up on nitroxoline. The reason you can't get it in the USA is that it apparently causes subacute myelo-optic neuropathy

Please throw those pills away.
posted by Justinian at 8:26 AM on September 8, 2007


It looks like this is a quinolone antibiotic, similar to ofloxacin or norfloxacin available by prescription here. It's available in other countries but not in the US. Now, none of the good doctors of mefi are going to post in a public forum and say "Sure! Go ahead and take some drug that hasn't been FDA approved, and for which you have no prescription!" A free clinic sounds like a good idea. Where are you located?
posted by selfmedicating at 8:30 AM on September 8, 2007


Response by poster: Brooklyn. Most of the feedback I'm getting here is what I was thinking, but it helps to have scientific or pseudoscientific confirmation. There's a walk in clinic at duane reade on 49th, we're gonna go there later today.
posted by ndrw at 8:32 AM on September 8, 2007


Another one on the "do not take unnecessary antibiotics" pile. Not only may not do anything but help along the cultivation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but there are links between antibiotics & yeast infections in women. I didn't see the anti-fungal info when I did a quick look-see, but my guess is that it would help to prevent YI if there is an included anti-fungal in the pill.

You don't know what sort of bacteria she has, either. Different antibiotics target different things.
posted by kellyblah at 8:33 AM on September 8, 2007


selfmedicating - apparently what its most similar to is clioquinol.
posted by Justinian at 8:34 AM on September 8, 2007


Response by poster: I can't find a list of free clinics, does anyone know a resource for this? Seems like a good thing to have for the fellow uninsured.
posted by ndrw at 8:44 AM on September 8, 2007


Best answer: This antibiotic is not a fluoroquinolone; "selfmedicating" is wrong above. It has not been tested for safety or efficacy by the FDA. It is a urinary tract antibiotic, meaning that it leaves the plasma promptly - within 2 or 3 hours - enters the urine, and kills gram negatives in the bladder.

Since bacterial sore throats are usually caused by gram-positives, and since you don't know whether your girlfriend's condition is bacterial or viral, and since this drug does not remain in the bloodstream very long, I would estimate the chance of the drug helping as zero, even if the compound is present in the pill in an undegraded form and the stated quantity as you would hope. And that's a big if.

I don't know what the downside is, but I do know that I would not just randomly ingest something that came out of a Ukranian chemistry laboratory for any reason. Why would you?
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:57 AM on September 8, 2007


Try hot lemon water and shots of tabasco. I find that those two things burn everything out of my throat quickly.

A friend of mine is an opera singer, and he swears by those two things.

It will probably resolve in a few days, though the vocal problems can last longer (once it took me a few weeks to get all my speech back).
posted by answergrape at 11:24 AM on September 8, 2007


When I was in Ukraine, I had some medical problems for which I consulted a U.S.-trained doctor. He recommended an antibiotic and warned me specifically to get the brand made in a particular other country—Bulgaria, I think it was, or Romania. Granted, a lot has changed in the relatively few years since then. But a lot has also stayed the same.

And every Ukrainian thinks s/he's your doctor. This turns out not to be the case.
posted by eritain at 6:01 PM on September 8, 2007


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