Some humans have extremely low levels of P-glycoprotein

A few months ago there were concerns raised by the Japanese government that the bird flu medications Tamiflu was causing hallucinations in some of the people who used the drug, particularly teenagers.

In order to find out for sure if the Tamiflu drug was having any effect on the brain two sets of researchers from different universities in Japan carried out extensive research on the Tamiflu drug and from their research they can deduce why in some extremely rare cases individuals humans are affected adversely by the Tamiflu drug.

The human body is an extremely complex machine and hundreds of processes go on when the Tamiflu drug is taken. The brain has a special mechanism called the blood-brain barrier which prevents the Tamiflu from directly entering the brain and in this barrier is a compound called P-glycoprotein that acts as the active barrier.

The researchers used mice which had been specially bred to lack P-glycoprotein and they saw that with these mice the amount of Tamiflu entering the brain was much much higher.

Some humans have extremely low levels of P-glycoprotein and also their livers may react differently to the Tamiflu drug which can increase in the active dosage within the human body. The likelihood is that the Japanese people who suffered from hallucinations after taking Tamiflu did so because of low levels of P-glycoprotein.

The Japanese market for Tamiflu is extremely big as it is used for the normal type of flu very routinely and that is why the cases of Tamiflu hallucination appeared to be mostly in Japan. At Ukmedix News being aware of the millions of people who use Tamiflu every year for normal influenza and the tiny proportion of people who get affected by these hallucinations we feel that you have very little to worry about. On the other hand it is worth knowing about this side effect and should you administer Tamiflu and somebody starts to hallucinate at least you will know what the likely problem is.