Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Antibiotic Drug Bactrim Gave Young Girl Lung Failure That Left Her Fighting For Her Life And Others Who Took It Needing Lung Transplants

April 14. 2026

12-year-old Emmie Bellucci in the hospital after taking the antibiotic Bactrim and it causing lung failure

This is another in the series of articles I've been writing about the antibiotic Bactrim (trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole), manufactured by the company Sun Pharmaceutical Industries. Bactrim has killed over 300 people 0including children) in America and sickened many more. My mom was prescribed Bactrim on August 31, 2023 and it greatly damaged her health. I hate that drug for what it did to my mom's health. She nearly died after one week of taking it as prescribed.

I've found other cases of Bactrim harming the public. The Daily Mail reported in January 2025, "Doctors are sounding the alarm about a common antibiotic taken by millions that is linked to a number of deaths and extreme reactions. Taken by about 3million Americans every year,"

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has been the subject of several drug recalls due to safety issues

A number of children and some adults who were prescribed Bactrim also suffered lung failure and needed transplants..12-year-old Emmie Bellucci went into organ failure (lungs) after taking Bactrim. She was hospitalized for 5-months and a tracheostomy was performed to help her breathe.

Avoid Bactrim at all costs. It's a terrible drug. It's pretty sad when one of the main side effects of a pharma drug is death. There are other antibiotics that are better and more effective with far less side effects than Bactrim (trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole). Remember the name Bactrim and don't take it.

STORY SOURCE

Doctors' warning over killer antibiotic taken by millions that causes organ failure

READ MORE: Antibiotic taken by millions is pulled from shelves in Alabama

The Bellucci family is raising money via GoFundMe for medical expenses.

 11:59 EDT, 24 January 2025 | Updated: 17:22 EDT, 24 January 2025 - Doctors are sounding the alarm about a common antibiotic taken by millions that is linked to a number of deaths and extreme reactions. Taken by about 3million Americans every year, Bactrim is usually used to treat a range of bacterial infections such as ear, chest and stomach bugs, as well as UTIs.

Emmie Bellucci, 12, from Texas, was prescribed two courses of the antibiotic for cystic acne - a severe form that causes painful lumps deep in the skin - last year. A severe reaction caused her lungs to become severely injured and shut down. She has been hospitalized with five months, reliant on a tube in her windpipe - a tracheostomy - to help her breathe. Doctors believe the drug triggers an immune response in young patients like Emmie that causes the body to attacks healthy tissue that lines lungs, causing respiratory failure. Experts investigating the rare complication are now calling for increased research on Bactrim's long-term harms and tests to look for risk factors before describing the drug...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk

My Journey of Discovery

 In 2018, one of my long term ECMO patients was featured in a CNN Health article as she walked and talked on ECMO. This article caught the attention of other patients and their families who felt like their stories were similar to our patient. They shared their medical histories that often lead to severe lung failure requiring ECMO (lung bypass), lung transplant, and/or death after Trimethoprim-Sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim) exposure. Since then we have found 20 patients, published multiple articles which are linked below and continue to actively evaluate new patients for this disease. As such, there was a label change by the FDA on package inserts in 2021.

https://www.jennamillermd.com/bactrim

Common Antibiotic Combination Causes Sudden Death

January 6, 2015 -  Hyperkalemia may be a concern when patients are prescribed trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole. Now and again, a study comes along that changes how health care professionals think about prescribing. Recently, research released by the British Medical Journal implicated trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole as a cause for increased risk of sudden death in specific populations.

This particular study gathered data for more than 17 years, from 1994 through 2012, and included patients aged 66 years or older who were being treated with either an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) and then suddenly died within 7 or 14 days of starting treatment as an outpatient with an oral antibiotic. Of the more than 1.5 million patients included in the study, nearly 40,000 died suddenly after beginning oral antibiotic treatment. The results showed that, in this specific patient population, 3 of every 1000 individuals taking either ACE inhibitors or ARBs who then begin treatment with trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole will die suddenly within 7 to 14 days.

Those results are significant when compared with the control cohort, which recorded only 1 sudden death per 1000 patients. Previous research has shown that older patients treated with trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole who are concurrently taking ACE inhibitors or ARBs have an increased risk for hospitalization due to hyperkalemia. The authors of that prior study theorized that such increased risk of sudden death in the cohort was associated with the quick and clinically significant rise in potassium, which then caused an unrecognized arrhythmic death.

The authors also implied that sudden death in those patients might be inappropriately attributed to something other than hyperkalemia, such as an underlying cardiovascular disease. With more than 250 million prescriptions for ACE inhibitors and ARBs annually, and more than 20 million prescriptions for trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole dispensed each year in the United States, chances are that the 2 will be prescribed together. When appropriate, it is prudent for clinicians to evaluate alternative antibiotic regimens, consider a decreased duration of treatment, or closely monitor serum potassium levels in this particular patient population.

https://www.pharmacytimes.com

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