Acute Liver Disease Associated with Erythromycins, Sulfonamides, and Tetracyclines

1 October 1993 | Volume 119 Issue 7 Part 1 | Pages 576-583

Objective: To determine whether erythromycins, sulfonamides, and tetracyclines are associated with an increased risk for acute hepatitis.

Design: Case-control study.

Setting: Medicaid billing data from Michigan and Florida between 1980 and 1987.

Patients: The 107 cases included patients hospitalized with acute symptomatic hepatitis without an identifiable cause of liver disease noted in the medical record. Four controls per case were randomly selected and were matched for age, sex, and state.

Results: Five cases (4.7%) and four controls (0.9%) were exposed to erythromycins, yielding an odds ratio of 5.2 (95% CI, 1.1 to 26.6). No case or control was exposed to erythromycin estolate. Eight cases (7.5%) and three controls (0.7%) were exposed to oral sulfonamides, yielding an odds ratio of 11.4 (CI, 2.7 to 67.8). All (except one control) had received trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Five cases (4.7%) and four controls (0.9%) were exposed to tetracyclines, yielding an odds ratio of 5.2 (CI, 1.4 to 19.7). The results did not change substantively for erythromycin or sulfonamides after adjustment using multiple logistic regression for age, sex, state, and use of other hepatotoxic drugs. With tetracyclines, however, the odds ratio decreased to 3.6 (CI, 0.9 to 14.3). Associations were also seen with isoniazid (P = 0.008) and rifampicin (P = 0.04). The number of patients developing acute symptomatic liver disease resulting in hospitalization for each million patients treated with a 10-day course of erythromycin was 2.28 cases; for sulfonamides, this Figure was 4.8 cases; and for tetracycline, the Figure was1.56 cases.

Conclusion: Erythromycin, sulfonamides, and tetracyclines are associated with acute symptomatic hepatitis resulting in hospitalization. Given the widespread use of these drugs, they will be among the more common drugs associated with hepatitis.

Author and Article Information

From the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey; the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Health Information Designs, Inc., Arlington, Virginia; the Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, Maryland.
Requests for Reprints: Jeffrey L. Carson, MD, Division of General Internal Medicine, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 97 Paterson Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08903.
Grant Support: By Food and Drug Administration Cooperative Agreement FD-U-000079.