The patient, who suffered from cancer, was started on antibiotics to counteract the effects of chemotherapy, but ended up developing a rare reaction to the drugs.
The case happened recently in Japan and affected a woman, about 60 years old, who suffers from colon and rectal cancer.
As the chemotherapy sessions, which she had undergone 14 months earlier, left the patient weakened, she started taking minocycline to try to counteract the adverse effects of treatments.
Despite not having revealed the date of the event, doctors from the University of Fukuoka, in southern Japan, described the case in British Medical Journal Case Reports. In the publication, the team advances that certain parts of the skin on the patient’s face began to have a gray appearance.
“On examination of the oral cavity, a brownish black spot with prominent hairy filiform lingual papillaecovered the dorsum of the tongue”, reads the report, which details that the stain caused pain to the patient.
The woman was eventually diagnosed with black hairy tongue (BHT), a rare benign disease that is characterized by elongation and pigmentation of the taste buds, giving them a hair-like appearance.
According to daily mail, this condition is usually caused by poor oral hygiene, smoking, alcohol, food and drink stains and use of mouthwash with chlorhexidine. However, in this case, antibiotics were responsible for the diagnosis.
Doctors also detail that the association between the disease and antibiotics such as erythromycin, doxycycline, linezolid, penicillin, minocycline and metronidazole, is well documented in the medical literature.
In the case of this patient, the team suspected that the causative agent of the disease was the minocycline due to the presence of diffuse gray pigmentation on the face, characteristic of skin lesions induced by this antibiotic.
The drug will have altered the amount of bacteria in your mouth, but the case was completely reversible. For this, the medical team only needed to change the medication. Six weeks later, the patient had recovered considerably.
ZAP // 
