A 4-year-old boy was a week into intravenous antibiotics for pneumonia when he accidentally swallowed a few sips of a bottled cocktail. Within five minutes of his next antibiotic infusion, his face flushed, a rash spread over his body, his blood pressure fell to 70/50 mmHg, and his heart raced at 180 beats per minute.
Pediatricians at West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, described the episode in a case report in Frontiers in Pediatrics published June 17. They concluded the boy most likely had a disulfiram-like reaction, a drug-alcohol interaction that is rarely reported in children. According to the authors, life-threatening shock from an alcoholic drink taken during cefoperazone-sulbactam treatment "has not been previously described in pediatric cases."
