Trovafloxacin was a highly touted, broad-spectrum oral antibiotic introduced by Pfizer Inc. into the U.S. marketplace in 1998 as Trovan (the prodrug alatrofloxacin is the intravenous formulation of Trovan). Total sales for Trovan peaked at $300 million in 1999—approximately 300,000 prescriptions per patient per month—but increasing reports of liver toxicity and related patient death greatly reduced the use of the antibiotic. Pfizer stopped promoting the drug in late 1999, and the European Union’s Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products suspended all sales that same year. Because of its broad spectrum of activity, trovafloxacin remained available for use in nursing home patients and/or those experiencing life-threatening infections, but the antibiotic was officially withdrawn from the U.S. marketplace in 2001.

[Page 1444]The controversial history of trovafloxacin has proved to ...