Can Humans Take Fish Meds?
Earlier this month, a Tweet from author Rachel Sharp made the Internet pay attention to a disturbing trend: Some people were taking fish antibiotics to cure their ailments. Yes, fish antibiotics. Sharp’s Tweet quickly went viral, it included a screenshot of several thinly veiled Amazon reviews of humans who were clearly using the aquatic pet medicine Moxifish on themselves.
In the beginning the Internet was appalled. But few stopped to ask: what’s the issue with taking fish antibiotics?
Actually it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Fish are given many of the same antibiotics as humans— amoxicillin, penicillin, ciprofloxacin, and more—sometimes even in the same doses. These pills, are made with the intention to be dissolved in fish tanks and be absorbed through fishes’ skin, they can also look extremely similar to the human versions. And while a trip to the doctor can cost hundreds of dollars for someone who doesn’t have insurance, a bottle of 30 500mg capsules of Moxifish costs just $29.95 from the supplier, Fishceuticals.
But there are a few key reasons on why taking your fish’s drugs is unhealthy, no good idea. Let’s start at the top.
First, fish antibiotics are not regulated. Technically, they should be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees both animal drugs and human. Those animals including food animals (cattle, pigs, chickens) and companion animals (cats ,dogs, , horses) . Yet none of ornamental fish antibiotics were approved by the FDA.
“The antibiotics available in pet stores or online for ornamental fish have not been approved, conditionally approved, or indexed by the FDA, so it is illegal to market them,” the FDA said in a statement to Smithsonian.com. The statement continued:
In case a consumer sees these products in stores, they should be aware that these products have no assurance of safety, effectiveness or purity. The FDA doesn’t have any information about the unapproved antibiotics because they have not been evaluated for safety, effectiveness or purity. We advise people to not exchange them for approved products that are made for use in humans as prescribed by their health care provider.
Why aren’t they regulated? According to some veterinarians, they’re too small of a problem for the agency to bother with. Pet fish antibiotics make up a very small fraction of the total amount of antibiotics used, says Samuel Young, a veterinarian and founder of the Uncommon Creatures Mobile Veterinary Services, a corporation that treats animals from fish to gila monsters to llamas. Thus, pet fish meds don’t have nearly the same risks as antibiotics used for food animals, which the FDA is currently working to regulate more tightly.
The FDA says that it does not have any data on how widespread the fish antibiotics problem is. “We are currently looking into these products,” representatives wrote in a statement. “FDA considers taking action based on its resources, the risk the product poses, and its public health priorities.”
When fish meds lack the stamp of FDA approval, they instead often sport claims that they are “USP grade,” or pharmaceutical a supposed quality benchmark set by an independent non-profit called the United States Pharmacopeia. The USP, however, this organization is not a regulatory agency. Even though it tests a small number of supplements through its “USP verified” program, it does not otherwise measure the content or purity of drugs for their purported contents.
“I think it’s probably mostly B.S.” Young says of these grades. “[Companies] are not able to guarantee—or even required to guarantee—what’s actually in it, the purity of it, or the actual amount of it. It can be anything.”
According to the FDA’s website, the agency look forward to day to help make more of the medications given to “minor species,” which include fish, legally available and therefore regulated. But for now, Young describes the field of fish medicine as being in its infancy. He likens the situation to the early days of the livestock industry, when farmers could purchase a range of medications without a prescription. “We’re still figuring out what works for fish and what kind of diseases we’re treating,” he says.
But even if fish meds were labeled as human-grade medicines, using them to self-medicate would still be a bad idea.
The fish antibiotic Fish Mox Forte is made of amoxicillin, a type of penicillin. Penicillin comes with different side effects than other classes of antibiotics, and it is well known to breed bacterial resistance.
When a doctor prescribes you antibiotics, the first step is to ensure that you’re dealing with a bacterial infection by going under the proper tests. Antibiotics, which are made to slow or kill the growth of bacteria that cause infection, are useless against a virus—and you don’t want to use them if you aren’t obligated to, or it might cause bacterial resistance.
The next step is to figure out what kind of bacteria you’re fighting. Even broad spectrum antibiotics work in different ways to target different kinds of infections. Moxifish, for example, contains amoxicillin, which is a type of penicillin. When a fish absorbs this compound through their skin, it moves through the bloodstream until it latches onto a bacteria’s rigid cell wall. There, it meet a wall-building, causing a build-up of pressure that eventually causes the cell to burst. Unfortunately, many types of bacteria have grown immune to penicillin: Staphylococcus Aureus, the bacteria commonly responsible for skin infections no longer responds to this class of antibiotics.
Other fish antibiotics, such as API’s Erythromycin, also named macrolides. These compounds tear bacteria down by targeting the protein-building structures of the cells. Without proteins (which act as structural supports, messengers, storage, transporters and more) the cell dies. Another antibiotic class named Quinolones, which contain the fish drug Fish Flox, hinders bacterial cells from copying their DNA, an therefore preventing the colonies from multiplying. Quinolone are used to cure a range of infections including urinary tract infections, but in recent years many bacteria have begun to develop resistance.
Buying the right antibiotic for the illness is crucial. “Let’s say the antibiotic is correct, that capsule contains the right amount of medicine, and it’s a good quality medication and its able to be absorbed into the system,” says Wilson E. Gwin, director of the Purdue Veterinary Teaching Hospital Pharmacy. “We don’t really know if that’s the right drug for what the person is trying to treat. If it’s the wrong drug, they can do themselves even more harm.”
Choosing the right med can be quite challenging. Learning the details of each antibiotic is “an exhausting part of medical school,” says Daniel Morgan, a epidemiologist and physician at the University of Maryland. “It’s a bit like learning verb tenses in a language.”
So what if you don’t go to the doctor, roll the dice and choose wrong? Well, each drug comes with its own set of allergic reactions and potential side effects. Taking amoxicillin while suffering a viral infection such as mono, for example, can cause the body to erupt in rashes, says Morgan. Ciprofloxacin, previously a go-to for sinus infections and UTIs, has come under recent scrutiny for being the cause of lasting damage to tendons, joints, muscles, nerves and the central nervous system. Many other antibiotic classes come with unpleasant effects.
And even choosing correctly doesn’t guarantee you to succeed.
There’s a reason why bacterial resistance is a public health problem: Bacteria are hardy foes that adjust rapidly to the changing environment of you. Sometimes, they end up with useful random mutations during divisions, which they can transfer to future bacterial generations in a matter of hours. Other times, they acquire genes that are transferred from already resistant bacteria. “As a result, each new progeny becomes a resistant one and a potential donor of resistance traits to new recipient bacteria,” says Stuart B. Levy, a microbiologist and drug resistance expert at Tufts University, in the book The Antibiotic Paradox.
Through these processes, the ingenious invaders progressively adapt themselves as they multiply that can tackle and even degrade the antibiotics. Some even fight genes that code for tiny “pumps,” that forcibly remove antibiotics from the bacterial cell. “Bacteria are not there to be destroyed; they’re not going to give up,” Levyy says.
Finally, antibiotics have the ability of killing both bad and beneficial bacteria, making it crucial to complete the entire course of treatment to avoid adverse effects. It’s very important to take them for the proper duration. Ending an antibiotic regime too soon—or taking one for too long—can both breed further bacterial resistance. If you were to stop antibiotics prematurely, there is a huge chance of relapse, which will result the disease-causing microbes developing and proliferating resistance. Conversely, using antibiotics for an extended period of time may give bacteria more time to develop ways to evade the medication, according to recent studies.
In summary, it’s important not to recklessly experiment with one’s bacteria
….
Even though it’s not a recent trend, people obtaining antibiotics from fish supplies is a well-documented phenomenon, as Levy notes in his book. This practice has been occurring since at least the 1990s. During his investigation of antibiotic misuse, Levy talked to a pet store owner who admitted to using fish antibiotics to treat an infected finger, citing that other pet store employees were known to do the same.
In 2002, the editor New England Journal of Medicine received a letter from the Army physician Brandon J. Goff documenting an encounter with an unnamed Army Special Forces soldier who came to him with a sinus infection after self-medicating with fish antibiotics from a pet store. The soldier said that this source of antibiotics is “common knowledge among all branches of the American Special Forces community,” according to Goff.
In the years since, many pet stores have become aware of the trend and removed these antibiotics from their shelves. Smithsonian.com was informed by PetSmart representatives that the company had limited its selection to “fish medication in forms that could hardly be consumed by humans. This let us to provide fish medication to the customers who are in need of their aquariums while helping to stop misuse.” (The company did not address the date of the change and did not respond to a follow-up request.) In the last week, Amazon has also removed these antibiotics from their site last week in following Sharp’s Tweet; the company declined to comment about the move.
Unfortunately, fish antibiotics are still available within reach. A quick Google search is between the customers and fish antibiotics to pull up a range of other sources, including Thomas Labs and Walmart. And many websites, YouTube videos, and blogs provide guidance for humans seeking out information on taking fish medications for their own personal use. These often target Doomsday preppers; people who store up medical supplies and other necessities in case if a catastrophe ends the society—but reddit and other online forums reveal that the fad isn’t limited to those preparing for the end of days.
Morgan says that some people using fish meds may get lucky. And others may experience few ill or good effects. But if you are taking fish antibiotics, you’re putting your most valuable asset, your health on the line. “People will always figure out a way to get at things that they think maybe helpful,” says Morgan. “The problem is you need to balance benefits and potential harms … I would guess that there are people out there who have been damaged by doing it.”
“We’re not talking about a 50 cent or $200 fish—we’re talking about a human life,” adds Gwin. “You really are taking a chance. Is it worth it?”
