Japanese Study Shows No Psychiatric Side Effects With Tamiflu

the influenza virus can aggravate existing psychiatric conditions

At Ukmedix News sometime ago we reported that there were concerns in Japan that the Tamiflu influenza drug could be causing psychiatric problems in certain patients who were using it. The Ministry of Health in Japan announced that they would be conducting tests to establish whether there was any veracity in the reports and the results show that a casual link between Tamiflu and the psychiatric problems has not been proven.

In the influenza patients that were examined by the health ministry research project they saw that out of 137 patients who had shown dangerous psychiatric behaviour only 82 of them had taken Tamiflu. The researchers also noted that after the government had warned that Tamiflu should not be given to patients between the ages of ten and eighteen the number of reported psychiatric problems and this age group did not diminish at all.

Japan is the largest consumer of Tamiflu in the world and the drug is regularly prescribed for routine influenza cases. It is reckoned that over 35 million individuals have used Tamiflu in Japan and that about 70 percent of all the Tamiflu consumed worldwide has been consumed in Japan. The Ministry of Health said that their study proved to be inconclusive and that they would be waiting to see the results of another study done by a different group of doctors and Tamiflu experts which is likely to be published sometime in January 2008.

It is also worth noting that the influenza virus can aggravate existing psychiatric conditions in certain individuals and therefore it is possible that the reason that these people exhibited abnormal behaviour when using Tamiflu was not attributed to the Tamiflu but to the fact that they were suffering from influenza.

The Tamiflu drug is known to be the most effective defence against the deadly influenza virus H5N1 known as bird flu.