From August "Emergency Medicine Today", American College of Emergency Medicine

 Adverse effects from antibiotics send thousands to EDs annually, research indicates.

MedPage Today (8/13, Gever) reported that "[a]dverse effects from antibiotics led to more than 140,000 emergency [department] visits in the U.S. annually from 2004 through 2006, accounting for one-fifth of all such drug-related events," according to research published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Investigators "analyzed adverse-event data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System and Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance projects, developed by the CDC, the FDA, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission." The researchers "also used data on outpatient antibiotic prescription volume from several national surveys of ambulatory care providers." The "[d]ata...revealed a total of 6,614 visits related to outpatient antibiotic therapy, which was extrapolated to an annual national volume of 142,505 visits." The researchers found that "[a]llergic reactions accounted for an estimated 78.7 percent of antibiotic-related events." The investigators added that the "[a]ntibiotic classes most commonly involved with adverse events were the penicillins, fluoroquinolones, and cephalosporins, which were involved in 36.9 percent, 13.5 percent, and 12.2 percent of visits, respectively."