Antibiotics and gait disorders

The neurological toxicity of many antibiotics has been reported in a number of articles and clinical notes. In this review antibiotics are classified according to the physiopathogenic mechanism that can give rise to a gait disorder, taking both clinical and experimental data into account. An exhaustive search was conducted in Google Scholar and PubMed with the aim of finding reviews, articles and clinical cases dealing with gait disorders secondary to different antibiotics. The different antibiotics were separated according to the physiopathogenic mechanism that could cause them to trigger a gait disorder. They were classified into antibiotics capable of producing cerebellar ataxia, vestibular ataxia, sensitive ataxia or an extrapyramidal gait disorder. The main aim was to group all the drugs that can give rise to a gait disorder, in order to facilitate the clinical suspicion and, consequently, the management of patients.