| The anti-viral drug Tamiflu is manufactured by Roche Holdings, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. It was first approved in 1999 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in capsule form for the treatment of influenza in adults. The approval was extended in 2000 to children over the age of one. Tamiflu is not a flu vaccine, but a treatment for the flu in people who have had symptoms for a period of less than two days. The Tamiflu claim is that it keeps the influenza virus trapped in cells that have already been infected, thereby preventing further spread of the disease. This drug is also called a neuraminidase inhibitor.
Tamiflu is the only neuraminidase inhibitor approved for marketing in the United States by the FDA. Advocates of the drug argue that it will be essential in stopping a bird-flu pandemic if the disease mutates in a way that makes it spread easily from one human to another. Tamiflu is currently sold in about 2 million prescriptions a year in the United States, but both the World Health Organization (WHO) and individual countries have begun to stockpile millions of doses. The United States has already stockpiled 16 million doses and plans to gather 50 million. Some individual states plan to gather additional doses as well.
The FDA required a warning about serious skin reactions to Tamiflu in 2005, but more recently has ordered the manufacturer to warn that patients taking Tamiflu should be carefully monitored for unusual behavior. See Drug Warning: Tamiflu Side Effects and Risks for information about the FDA’s warnings of possible Tamiflu side effects. Check out the following articles for more information about Tamiflu, filing a Tamiflu lawsuit and finding a Tamiflu attorney.
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