Via the Guardian Unlimited: New tests on bird flu drug after teenagers' deaths. Excerpt:
The reputation of flu drug Tamiflu suffered a fresh blow yesterday when the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche and its Japanese partner announced new clinical trials to establish whether there is a possible link between the antiviral and dozens of deaths and injuries among Japanese teenagers.
The new research on Tamiflu, which is being stockpiled as the best available treatment in a bird flu epidemic, was recommended by a Japanese health ministry drug safety panel investigating fears that it may have a link to several teenagers who killed or harmed themselves during episodes of extreme mental disorder. In February a boy and a girl, both 14, fell to their deaths.
The ministry said there was no evidence of a causal link between Tamiflu and the symptoms but ordered doctors not to prescribe it to teenagers, except those suffering extreme flu symptoms.
It advised Roche and Chugai Pharmaceutical, which sells the drug in Japan, to begin pre-clinical and human clinical trials to establish whether it could be behind side-effects such as delirium and delusion.
Chugai said that the results of the research, expected by the end of the year, would be used "for the best possible safety measures for the next influenza season".
It said it would conduct human clinical trials using 12-30 volunteers, while Roche would conduct toxicity studies using rats to gauge the drug's effects on the brain. "We are taking the situation seriously and are increasing our efforts to look into whether there is any causality."
When H5N1 tends to kill young people, we don't need an H5N1 drug that makes young people kill themselves.
