Much is written in medical journals about medications causing damage to the mitochondria, altering or DNA deletions and cell apoptosis.(see articles below) These can manifest as fatigue, exhaustion, allergies, diabetes, heart failure, and a multitude of other diseases including those for which there are no dognosis/tests available. Meds cause DNA mutations, in most cases causing ill health! Symptoms can be immediate causing allergic reactions, side effects or Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs), or delayed reactions, which can manifest years later.

There is strong evidence linking the rise in medication prescriptions, (and off the counter meds (OTC) invasive investigations/surgeries, vaccines, with a steep rise in chronic illness/diseases, amongst children, and adults alike. The generation born in the late 1950s AND early 1960s suffer serious illness in their forties and fifties, on the rise, disabilities and limitations occurring much earlier than the generation born after WWI and WWII.

Reliable sources published articles, concerning generation X, and future generations, suffering chronic illnesses at an earlier age, greater disabilities, and shorter life span. All linked to vaccines and medications, environmental illness and unnecessary surgical procedures.

The damage occurs at cellular level causing damage to ATP/ADR conversion, and various biochemical dysfunction. is well documented.

ADRs symptoms are denied by doctors as being "rare", causing despair and distress to patients. Overall, it is an uphill struggle with medical professionals.
Widespread denial and collusion perpetuate the myth that Adverse Drug Reaction are "rare"... far from it. Most people do not make the connection with a prescribed or over the counter drug they took. Delayed reactions can take years to manifest as in the case for auto-immune illnesses which can take years to develop (caused by meds).

Unaware for instance that Aspirin can trigger tinnitus, or some prescribed diuretics can trigger diabetes? Read on:

An excellent article concerning medications affecting mitochondria This is totally different from hereditary mitochondrial diseases.

"Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain adverse reactions......"

http://www.montanaim.com/pubs/Medication-induced_mitochondrial_damage_and_disease.Neustadt-Pieczenik.pdf

For those interested in the correlation between mito cytopathies and meds, and there is a correlation between these two.

Worth noting that often those cytopathies manifest themselves, months to years later. ( I can't take meds, even if I wanted to. I simply could not be more iller, barely hanging by a thread as it is). Honest MDs advised not to take any meds, and if having to as in life/death situation, to take minute dosage and increase over a period of several months..

This may explain the overlap with ADRs to meds, vaccines, CFS, GWVs, floxies etc... Those who are severely affected, suffer similar symptoms and disease process.

Someone I met in a local CFS support group, developed stomach cancer. Before passing away, he told us that severe symptoms from CFS were far worse than his cancer. I suspect that he too suffered from an ADR...

Medication-induced mitochondrial damage and disease.
Neustadt J, Pieczenik SR.
Montana Integrative Medicine, Bozeman, MT 59718, USA. drneustadt@gmail.com

Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the medicine has advanced in its understanding the role mitochondria play in health and disease. Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson's disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis.

Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others.

While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their precursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine) hold promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies.

This article reviews our basic understanding of how mitochondria function and how medications damage mitochondria to create their occasionally fatal adverse effects.

Delivery of Drugs and Macromolecules to Mitochondria

This article is indicating how many miles scientists have to go yet, how difficult it is to repair things at cell level in the human body. Abstract Mitochondria is where the bulk of the cell’s ATP is produced. Mutations occur to genes coding for members of the complexes involved in energy production. Some are a result of damages to nuclear coded genes and others to mitochondrial coded genes. This review describes approaches to bring small molecules, proteins and RNA/DNA into mitochondria. The purpose is to repair damaged genes as well as to interrupt mitochondrial function including energy production, oxygen radical formation and the apoptotic pathway. Keywords: Mitochondrial DNA, Mitochondrial disease, Translocators, Protein and RNA import, Membrane insertion, Lipophilic cations Full text: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2267434 http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2267434&blobtype=pdf For those who are keen on taking antibiotics, read about mitochondria cytoxicity, which meansm, essentially, DNA damage. There are several articles posted on the FAVC, http://noquinolones.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=318&page=1 worse offenders are, antibiotics, (Fqs, macrolides, tetracyclines, clyndamicin, Rifamopin) anti-depressants and NSAIDs.. This study is well designed and discusses glycation, cell death, lactic acidosis etc.. It mentions about high dose of these. I have yet to come accross a published paper about the toxicity of low dosage of Fqs or any other meds, LOL. It is known, that many who took just ONE lariam or Fq, or Diclofenac, have died of sudden cardiac death, triggered by cardiac electrical conductivity dysfunction, caused by a med!! http://aac.asm.org/cgi/reprint/AAC.00729-05v1.pdf Well illustrated and easy to read article re: mitochondria and its role in disease processes. http://www.ceri.com/mito.htm A lecture from Professor Leona Samson at MIT. Over my head, but, there were a few interesting facts. Watch the vid here: How much progress since this lecture in 2006?? Forget cigarette smoking (well, not completely). The really bad news, says Leona Samson, is that by virtue of the act of living, a human body will be exposed to destructive threats from the environment, and from within itself. Charbroiled burgers, sunlight, pollution, and even how our bodies use oxygen all pose what Samson calls “insults” to the DNA of our cells. Our success in fending off these inevitable DNA-damaging agents in the environment depends a lot on inheritance, Samson tells us. For instance, victims of the rare disease Xeroderma pigmentosum don’t have the capacity to repair DNA that’s been corrupted by UV radiation from the sun. Children with Xeroderma pigmentosum develop skin cancers. In the larger population, such cancers tend to occur much later in life. The reason, Samson says, is that most of us have a formidable array of mechanisms within our cells for detecting and mending defective DNA. Cells with flawed DNA that goes un repaired must either die, or go on to mutate in often dangerous ways. Samson wants to figure out how to protect cells against carcinogenic effects in the environment, and whether a tumor cell will be susceptible to treatment. She has been painstakingly studying the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast organism, trying to identify all the factors that determine whether or not DNA damaging agents kill or mutate cells. She interrogated each of this organism’s 5,800 genes, “asking one by one, which of you is making a product that’s important to helping a cell recover from damage.” In what was a “huge surprise,” Samson learned that there are more than 2,000 gene products involved in helping a yeast cell repair itself, “from areas of the cell never suspected before for being important” in this way. Now Samson must elucidate the complex cellular pathways that “talk to each other” when DNA is damaged -- and figure out “how to extend to humans, ultimately.”