A copy of the U-M paper published in the 1997 Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics is available on request. Because they are so effective and rarely produce allergic reactions, physicians continue to prescribe them, even though they are known to cause hearing loss and kidney damage in a significant percentage of individuals who take them. Increasing levels of antibiotic-resistant infections associated with AIDS and a worldwide resurgence of tuberculosis, however, make it likely that their use will increase in the future.
Mothers take children with upper respiratory infections to their local pharmacy for an injection.
Thousands of tiny hair cells in the inner ear are especially vulnerable. Without functional hair cells, the inner ear is unable to detect sounds or transmit signals to auditory neurons leading to the brain. The result is irreversible hearing loss. That's when we decided to try using iron chelators to absorb the iron and keep it from combining with gentamicin. In an article published in the July 1997 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Schacht published the results of experiments showing that iron chelators did protect guinea pigs from gentamicin's ototoxic effects.