AP Features, March 21st, 2007
Japanese doctors were warned Wednesday against prescribing Tamiflu _ one of the few medicines believed effective against bird flu _ to teenagers after several young patients reportedly exhibited dangerous behavior. But the maker of the drug insisted it was safe.
The Health Ministry issued emergency instructions on Tuesday to a Japanese Tamiflu distributor, Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., to warn doctors not to give the drug to teenagers, a Chugai official said on condition of anonymity, citing policy.
Chugai began warning doctors, hospitals and pharmacies nationwide on Wednesday, the official said.
Concerns over the effects of Tamiflu, an anti-flu medicine also known as oseltamivir, have spiked in Japan after a boy and a girl, both 14, fell to their deaths from their condominiums while taking the drug in separate incidents in February.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it received more than 100 reports of delirium, hallucinations and other unusual psychiatric behavior, mostly in Japanese children treated with Tamiflu, between Aug. 29, 2005, and July 6, 2006. The Japanese government has not released detailed figures.
The drug, manufactured by Swiss company Roche Holding AG, already carries warnings in Japan and the United States that such abnormal behavior could occur.
Two 12-year-old boys also taking Tamiflu both broke legs after jumping out of their houses in separate incidents in February and March, the Chugai official said.
However, Roche announced Tuesday that new data from Japan and the U.S. showed no causal link between Tamiflu and neuropsychiatric symptoms.
"We don't understand the rationale for these actions undertaken by the Japanese government," Roche spokeswoman Martina Rupp told The Associated Press. "No causal relationship has been established between Tamiflu and these reports and we don't see this as an appropriate course of action."
Rupp said the new data showed that psychiatric symptoms are lower in influenza patients treated with Tamiflu than in patients who haven't received the drug.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Roche have also said that severe cases of flu can trigger the abnormal behavior displayed by some patients.
Tamiflu is widely used in Japan to treat influenza.
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Associated Press writer Eliane Engeler in Geneva contributed to this report.
