The review of Tamiflu and Relenza has been going on for a couple of years now

A review of the influenza drugs Tamiflu and Relenza by the Food & Drug Administration safety review panel says that the labeling of the medications should change. A tiny proportion of people who used these drugs have suffered from temporary psychological problems such as hallucination and the FDA felt that they had enough evidence to address the issue.

The review of Tamiflu and Relenza has been going on for a couple of years now and most of the evidence regarding these psychological side effects occurred in Japan where the use of Tamiflu is widespread even for regular mild cases of flu. The review panel has decided to recommend that the labeling of the Tamiflu drug is changed slightly to warn people of these side effects. It is also hoped that the new labelling advice calms people’s fears that the Tamiflu medication is dangerous and will hopefully explain that the cases of hallucination have been extremely rare.

The Food & Drug Administration in America is not actually obliged by law to take the advice of the advisory review panel but nevertheless it usually does and thus the chances are the labelling will be changed in line with the recommendations. There is also another issue at stake which is that should a bird flu pandemic breakout the Tamiflu drug is without a doubt the most effective medication to deal with the virus, and thus the fact that there is this side effects in extremely rare cases will be completely insignificant when compared to the benefits of taking the drug.

The Tamiflu drug has been officially mentioned by the World Health Organisation as being the best medication to treat the H5N1 bird flu virus. Governments all around the world have been stockpiling Tamiflu to protect their populations and economists have argued that the more Tamiflu they buy the less likely they will suffer from large amounts of human deaths.