Cutaneous adverse drug reactions are a known risk of antibiotic use, but it has been unclear which drug classes carry the highest risk — until now.
To crack at this mystery, researchers in Toronto analyzed two decades worth of data on hospitalizations and emergency department visits for serious skin reactions in older adults, according to a study published Aug. 8 in JAMA. They compared the results for each drug class to macrolides.
Among the 21,758 older adults, the antibiotics most strongly associated with serious skin conditions were sulfonamides, cephalosporins, nitrofurantoin, penicillins and fluoroquinolones.
For the 2,852 hospitalized patients, the average length of stay was six days, 9.6% required transfer to a critical care unit and 5.3% died in the hospital.
When clinically appropriate, the researchers recommended prescribers use lower-risk antibiotics.