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zeuzzz wrote:

Daedalus wrote:It's a family of antibiotics known for its adverse reactions... foremost being kidney damage and hearing loss.

Well you learn something new everyday. Well I tend to learn 100 new things everyday, but i'm an educational whore. Only remember 1% of them though*. Is the mechanism ototoxicity? I can't find any data on alcohol potentiating this side effect, but just found this article: http://www.news-medical.net/news/201112 ... fness.aspx

or 60 years, scientists have questioned how these antibiotics get into the inner ear. The Steyger and Li paper provides the strongest evidence yet for a definitive answer - they cross a specific "blood-labyrinth" barrier in the inner ear that protects its sensory hair cells from potentially damaging components in the blood.

The blood-labyrinth barrier actively transports important minerals and nutrients into the inner ear for sensitive auditory function - ions, amino acids and glucose, for example. Steyger says the aminoglycoside antibiotics likely use particular nutrient pathways for "drug trafficking" into the inner ear.

Now that Steyger has learned the predominant trafficking route, he and other scientists can test individual nutrient transport pathways to identify the mechanism that moves aminoglycoside antibiotics across the blood-labyrinth barrier. So the Steyger paper represents a significant milestone toward the ultimate goal - blocking the trafficking of these drugs into the inner ear and preventing the killing of hair cells and subsequent hearing loss and deafness.

I know that Metronidazole is severely contraindicated with alcohol, but in terms of typical anti-biotics the worst that usually happens in combination with ethyl-alcohol is nausea.

Are aminoglycosides atypical anti-biotics? I cant imagine that they would be widely used in our culture given the rampant and unapologetic alcoholic culture we live in.

*sarcasm disclaimer