Tamiflu And Pregnant Women

To date there is no available research on the effect of the Tamiflu drug on pregnant women but in Indonesia doctors were busy looking at a pregnant woman who developed bird flu symptoms and was adminitered the Tamiflu drug. The woman who is just 2 months pregnant is stable but the case is important as at present there is inadequate information on the use of Tamiflu with pregnant women.

Roche has done some studies with Tamiflu on animals and they did not show any direct or even indirect dangerous side effects with pregnancy. Roche also said that they knew of a number of females who had used Tamiflu when preganant and had had normal babies, however the information was anecdotal and not the result of clinical testing.

The guidelines at present that come from both the drug's manufacturer and also from the World Health Organisation say that doctors must prescribe the drug at their own discretion and when they feel that the benefit to the woman justifies a possible risk to the unborn foetus. The woman being treated is 35 years old, has been using the Tamiflu for a week and is recovering well and the Tamiflu appears not to have affected her pregnancy in any way.

The bird flu H5N1 virus has taken the lives of 141 people around the world in 3 years and of these 46 come from Indonesia which makes it the nation most hit by the killer virus. The virus is at present only possible to catch by close contact with poultry such as chicken and ducks and has yet to change into a human to human virus. If that were to happen the bird flu virus would be far more serious and would be likely to create a pandemic.