Fluoroquinolones and risk of Achilles tendon disorders: case-control study.

(project number 95/29/04). The opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS Executive. DM was supported in the preparation of this paper by an unconditional grant from Merck Sharpe and Dohme. SEH and HAWN acknowledge grants RG2000025 and RG93008 from the British Heart Foundation. of underdiagnosis of familial hypercholesterolaemia in routine practice: prospective registry study. MB, et al. Familial hypercholesterolaemia regression study: a randomised trial of low-density-lipoprotein apheresis. Study Group. Prevention of cardiovascular events and death with prava-statin in patients with coronary heart disease and a broad range of initial cholesterol levels. al. The effect of pravastatin on coronary events after myocardial infarction in patients with average cholesterol levels. Prevention of coronary heart disease with pravastatin in men with hyper-cholesterolemia. HAW. Screening for hypercholesterolaemia versus case finding for famil-ial hypercholesterolaemia: a systematic review and cost effectiveness analysis. The type of mutation in the low density lipoprotein receptor gene influences the cholesterol-lowering response of the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor simvastatin in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia. Outcome of case finding among relatives of patients with known hetero-zygous familial hypercholesterolaemia. al. Five-hundred life-saving interventions and their cost-effectiveness. Fluoroquinolones have been associated with tendon disorders, usually during the first month of treatment, 1–5 but the epidemiological evidence is scanty. We did a nested case-control study among users of fluoroquinolones in a large UK general practice database to study the association with Achilles tendon disorders. We obtained data from the IMS Health database (UK MediPlus), which contains data from general practice on consultations, morbidity, prescriptions, and other interventions in a source population of 1-2 million inhabitants. The base cohort consisted of all patients aged 18 years or over who had received a fluoroquinolone. We excluded people with a history of Achilles tendon disorders, cancer, AIDS, illicit drug use, or alcohol misuse. We identified potential cases by reviewing patient profiles and clinical data and excluded tendon disorders due to direct trauma. We randomly sampled a group of 10 000 control patients from the study cohort. We defined four categories of exposure to fluoroquinolones: current use, recent use, past use, and no use. We defined current use as when the tendon disorder occurred in the period between the start of the fluoroquinolone treatment and the calculated end date plus 30 days, recent use as when the calculated end date was between 30 and 90 days before the occurrence of the …