This study aimed to investigate the association between the risk of aortic aneurysm (AA)/aortic dissection (AD) and the use of fluoroquinolones (FQs). PubMed, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Web of Science and Scopus were searched for relevant articles to 21st February 2021. Studies that compared the risk of AA/AD in patients who did and did not receive FQs or other comparators were included. The pooled results of nine studies with 11 study cohorts showed that the use of FQs increased the risk of AA/AD by 69% (pooled risk ratio (RR) = 1.69 (95% CI = 1.08, 2.64)). This significant association remained unchanged using leave-one-out sensitivity test analysis. Similar results were found for AA (pooled RR = 1.58 (1.21, 2.07)) but no significant association was observed for AD (pooled RR = 1.23 (0.93, 1.62)). Stratified by the comparators, the use of FQs was associated with a significantly higher risk of AA/AD compared to azithromycin (pooled RR = 2.31 (1.54, 3.47)) and amoxicillin (pooled RR = 1.57 (1.39, 1.78)). In contrast, FQ was not associated with a higher risk of AA/AD, when compared with amoxicillin/clavulanic acid or ampicillin/sulbactam (pooled RR = 1.18 (0.81, 1.73)), sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (pooled RR = 0.89 (0.65, 1.22)) and other antibiotics (pooled RR = 1.14 (0.90, 1.46)). In conclusion, FQs were associated with an increased risk of AA or AD, although the level of evidence was not robust. However, FQs did not exhibit a higher risk of AA or AD compared with other broad-spectrum antibiotics. Further studies are warranted to clarify the role of FQs in the development of AA or AD.
Keywords: amoxicillin; aortic aneurysm; aortic dissection; azithromycin; fluroquinolone; sulfamethoxazole–trimethoprim.