Drug · FAERS side-effect profile with label screen

Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide side effects: what 161 FDA adverse event reports show

Erythromycin And Benzoyl Peroxide · 6 reaction terms · 51 drug–reaction co-reports · data 2026-09-14

Drug class

Macrolide, Macrolide Antimicrobial

FDA label (Established Pharmacologic Class) of the closest related product

Label matched

Erythromycin (Erythromycin)

closest FDA label found for this product string; brand list suppressed because the label is a related product, not an exact match

Who reports

161 reports · 52% serious · 4 with death outcome · 66% female

openFDA FAERS counts, all years, deduplication not applied

Used for

To reduce the development of drug-resistant bacteria and maintain the effectiveness of erythromycin tablets, USP and other antibacterial drugs, erythromycin tablets, USP should be used only to treat or prevent infections that are proven or strongly suspected to be caused by susceptible bacteria.

FDA label, Indications and Usage

What it is

DESCRIPTION Erythromycin tablets, USP are an antibacterial product containing erythromycin, USP, in a unique, nonenteric film coating for oral administration. Erythromycin tablets are available in two strengths containing either 250 mg or 500 mg of erythromycin base.

FDA label, Description section

Boxed warning

None in the current label

How to read this page. FAERS is a spontaneous-reporting system: counts are not incidence rates and a signal is not proof of causation. Each reaction below is run through an automated screen — is the term in the FDA label (known), in the indications (the disease being treated), an administrative/coding term, or none of these (unlabeled)? That screen is mechanical text matching, not a causality assessment. The 30 hand-written Bradford Hill assessments are on the causality assessment page. Not medical advice.

Causality screen of the 4 strongest signals

Reporting / coding artifact 1Not in label — unassessed 3

What the badges mean

Reporting / coding artifact An administrative, monitoring or exposure term (product issue, off-label use, 'test normal', overdose...). Not a biological reaction; a high PRR here reflects how reports are coded.
Not in label — unassessed Not found in the label text, not an artifact pattern. This is a genuine candidate for a formal causality assessment (Bradford Hill / WHO-UMC); it has NOT had one here.

Strongest disproportionality signals

Flagged terms (PRR ≥ 2, χ² ≥ 4, n ≥ 10), ranked by PRR; infinite PRRs (no comparator reports) excluded. The EBGM column is a second, shrinkage-based estimate (MGPS) with its 5th percentile EB05 and the BCPNN IC025; a pair flagged by PRR alone is marked PRR-only and should be read as fragile. The strata column recomputes the PRR on serious reports only and flags pairs whose reports are unusually skewed by sex or come mostly from consumers rather than clinicians. 2 further terms are in the interactive explorer. Reaction links open the term's cross-drug page.

Show: hide coding/lab/outcome terms hide indication terms unlabeled only hide PRR-only

Reaction	Reports	PRR 95% CI · ROR · χ²/p	EBGM EB05 · IC025	Label screen	Serious-only & strata	Trial cross-check
Inflammatory bowel disease	18	237.2 153.4–366.9ROR 266.8 · χ² 3,996 / p <1e-300	189.5 EB05 126.8 · IC025 +4.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	serious PRR 272.2	no trial data cached
Colitis ulcerative	15	43.5 26.9–70.5ROR 47.9 · χ² 583 / p 5e-129	41.4 EB05 26.6 · IC025 +3.3 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	serious PRR 52.6	no trial data cached
Application site pain	7	41.2 19.9–85.0ROR 43.0 · χ² 236 / p 2e-53	37.2 EB05 19.2 · IC025 +2.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	–	no trial data cached
Product preparation error	5	31.3 13.2–74.1ROR 32.2 · χ² 118 / p 9e-28	26.9 EB05 10.2 · IC025 +1.5 3/3 methods agree	Reporting / coding artifact	–	no trial data cached

Trial evidence (ClinicalTrials.gov)

Trial cross-check not yet run for this drug (ClinicalTrials.gov pull covers the 800 most-reported drugs first).

Most frequently reported reactions

By raw co-report count, regardless of disproportionality. Common terms here are often the illness itself or generic outcomes.

Reaction	Reports	PRR 95% CI · ROR · χ²/p	EBGM EB05 · IC025	Label screen	Serious-only & strata	Trial cross-check
Inflammatory bowel disease	18	237.2 153.4–366.9ROR 266.8 · χ² 3,996 / p <1e-300	189.5 EB05 126.8 · IC025 +4.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	serious PRR 272.2	no trial data cached
Colitis ulcerative	15	43.5 26.9–70.5ROR 47.9 · χ² 583 / p 5e-129	41.4 EB05 26.6 · IC025 +3.3 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	serious PRR 52.6	no trial data cached
Application site pain	7	41.2 19.9–85.0ROR 43.0 · χ² 236 / p 2e-53	37.2 EB05 19.2 · IC025 +2.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	–	no trial data cached
Product preparation error	5	31.3 13.2–74.1ROR 32.2 · χ² 118 / p 9e-28	26.9 EB05 10.2 · IC025 +1.5 3/3 methods agree	Reporting / coding artifact	–	no trial data cached
Application site erythema	3	14.8 4.8–45.3ROR 15.0 · χ² 26 / p 2e-7	7.6 EB05 2.2 · IC025 +0.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	serious n=1	no trial data cached
Incorrect product storage	3	29.1 9.5–89.4ROR 29.7 · χ² 56 / p 4e-14	19.0 EB05 3.7 · IC025 +0.5 3/3 methods agree	Reporting / coding artifact	–	no trial data cached

Unlabeled candidate signals

Every screened signal with n ≥ 20 was either labeled, an indication term, or an artifact pattern — no unlabeled candidate stood out in the top signals.

Want to assess one of these properly? The runbook describes the Bradford Hill / trial-evidence workflow used on the assessment page, and handoff_top1000_signals.csv lists the strongest unassessed pairs across all drugs.

Common questions

What are the most reported side effects of Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide?

In FDA FAERS, the most frequently co-reported reaction terms for Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide are inflammatory bowel disease, colitis ulcerative, application site pain, application site erythema. These are report counts, not rates: FAERS has no denominator, reporting is voluntary and uneven, and a term can be reported because of the illness being treated rather than the drug.

Does Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide have an FDA boxed warning?

No. The FDA label retrieved for Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide has no boxed warning; see the label's Warnings and Precautions for the recognised risks.

Do FAERS signals prove that Erythromycin and Benzoyl Peroxide causes these side effects?

No. A disproportionality signal (PRR, ROR) means a reaction is reported more often with this drug than with others in the database. That can reflect a real effect, but also the disease being treated, stimulated reporting after news or litigation, co-medications, or how reports are coded. Causality needs temporality, dose-response, biological plausibility, consistency across data sources and, ideally, trial or cohort evidence. This page screens each term against the FDA label and ClinicalTrials.gov results; it does not establish causation.

Sources & methods

FDA label via openFDA (set ID 0277341c-8513-4317-9334-c242f97630c1, effective 20240320; matched on openfda.generic_name.exact:"ERYTHROMYCIN")
Bayesian shrinkage measures computed offline over all 1,317,300 cached pairs: BCPNN information component (IC, with Norén closed-form IC025) and MGPS empirical-Bayes geometric mean (EBGM, EB05) with a two-component gamma prior fitted by maximum marginal likelihood (α₁=0.57, β₁=0.02, α₂=1.42, β₂=0.70, w=0.17); unstratified
FAERS pair statistics from the OpenPV build of 2026-09-14 (openFDA count= aggregation, field patient.drug.openfda.generic_name.exact, 6 reaction terms, min 3 co-reports); PRR/ROR with 95% CI, chi-square with Yates correction
Serious-only and stratified counts (serious:1, patient.patientsex, primarysource.qualification) from openFDA count queries; serious-only PRR uses the drug serious report total and the term global serious total (N_serious=11,882,979); strata shown only when n ≥ 20
Seriousness and sex counts from openFDA count=serious, patient.patientsex, seriousnessdeath

Page generated 2026-10-08. Label and PubChem text are retrieved automatically and may lag the current label; always check the current prescribing information. OpenPV is a beta research tool of the Open Source Medicine Foundation.