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    Wednesday, November 16, 2005

    Tamiflu Warning: Japan's wonderfully named Institute for Pharmacovigilance suspects that the anti-viral medication, Tamiflu, may cause hallucinations in some people:

    The antiviral drug Tamiflu, being stockpiled by governments around the world as a defence against bird flu, is believed to have caused the deaths of two Japanese teenagers.

    ....Rokuro Hama, the doctor who made the connection, is the head of the Japan Institute for Pharmacovigilance and gave details of the incidents at a medical conference at the weekend. Dr Hama believes that Tamiflu was linked to a third case in which a teenage girl was narrowly prevented from jumping from a window two days after starting a course of the drug.

    The boys, who died during the 2004 and 2005 flu seasons, appear to have suffered severe side-effects within hours of taking a single capsule. Chugai Pharmaceutical, which distributes the drug in Japan, has told the ministry that a link between Tamiflu and the boys' deaths could not be ruled out.


    It may be a very idiosyncratic reaction which occurs in only some people who have trouble metabolizing the drug, but if the drug is to be used worldwide in large amounts, as is being proposed in the event of a possible influenza pandemic, then it could be seen more commonly. One reason the reaction may have shown up in Japan and not in other countries is that Japan leads the world in Tamiflu use:

    Japan has used more Tamiflu than any other country and has, accordingly, experienced the widest range of side-effects. Before the worldwide stockpiling began, the Japanese market accounted for 80 per cent of global sales of Tamiflu, which is used in about 10 million cases of flu a year in Japan.
     

    posted by Sydney on 11/16/2005 08:38:00 AM 0 comments

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