How to use this blog

I will post a new blog each month for people to add their comments and share their experiences, i.e."February Comments." Simply click on the title for comments in the current month and comment away.  It would be helpful to know how old your child was at the time and what side effects they experienced.

As the number of comments increase I will tally them up and post how many children have experienced a negative side effect after taking Tamiflu. Since this blog is specifically for children I will only be tallying the number of children effected. I understand some adults have had a negative experience too so please feel free to share that and help others know about the risks of this drug but I will not tally adults into the reporting number.

I understand that some people will want to make comments about the positive experience they had with Tamiflu or that it saved their children's life which is truly great and why the drug exists. As I stated in the post "why this blog exists" I do not think this drug should be pulled from the market I just believe that doctors and families are being mislead about the occurrence of negative effects from this drug. My hope is that this will raise awareness so at the very least parents and doctors are discussing these side effects and how to handle them if should they arise.

Our experience

Last Tuesday my 3 & 1/2 year old son woke up with a slight fever (101.2) so we kept him home from preschool that day. He was acting fine all day but by 4:00pm his fever had spiked to 103.7 so we nestled up on the couch for an evening of movies, grilled cheese and soup. Around 8:00pm he started to get the chills and had 104.7 temperature. I started to take off his clothes while calling the pediatrician's office. His fever went up to 105 and he started acting very lethargic so we rushed to the ER. Our pediatrician called on the way and said it was probably just the flu but since we had been alternating between Tylenol and Motrin and the fever was still that high we should get seen to rule out anything more serious. The ER doc was great, he could tell Mason was pretty out of it and said that he should come around once the fever was down. They did a nose swipe and the lab came back positive for the flu. The doc said if we started Tamiflu within the first 24 hours of symptoms that it would cut the virus length in half. We got the prescription that night and started it. The next day Mason woke up with a slight fever but by mid morning it was gone and he seemed to be feeling better. However on Thursday we still kept him home from preschool because he was acting slightly off which we just assumed was due to the virus. By Friday the behaviors were worse- he was acting agitated, complaining about the tag in his shirt bothering him (which he has never done before), running around in circles and when I asked him what he was doing he said he felt "funny," he was running into his little brother trying to knock him over (which I know sounds like a 3 yo thing to do but again not for Mason), and by the afternoon he couldn't walk up the stairs without tripping! He had to hold onto the rail just to keep from falling. I called his pediatrician's office and was shocked to hear that they won't prescribe Tamiflu to children because they have seen so many adverse reactions! I was so mad at myself for not looking into this drug before giving it to my son. Now that I know there are studies indicating the side effects are higher then what the drug company is saying as well as doctor's offices (I called another practice and was told the same thing) that won't prescribe the drug to children because of the effects they've seen, I'm committed to raising other's awareness.

Why this blog exists

This blog was created as a campaign to raise awareness of the negative side effects children may experience when prescribed Tamiflu. As with all drugs there are potential side effects, but in the case of this particular drug I have found conflicting evidence to suggest that the parent drug company Roche is misleading people to believe these effects are uncommon. Under "Treatment Studies in Pediatric Patients" of the patient information insert distributed withTamiflu there is a table they reported any adverse event that occurred in more then 1% of their pediatric patients, no where in this table does it mention any behavioral changes, mood changes, or neuropsychiatric events. On the reverse side of the information sheet under "precautions" they state there have been postmarket reports of neurological and behavioral symptoms, mostly in pediatric patients, but then they dismiss those reports stating that they appear to be uncommon based on Tamiflu usage data- SHOCKER that their own data doesn't support this! There have been reports out of the UK and Japan with much higher incident rates, with as many as 51% of children experiencing a negative side effect. While I was looking for any research in the United States I came across the following website, http://www.askapatient.com/, where over 700 people rated Tamiflu a 2.2 out of 5. Many of the responses on this site were similar to the findings out of the UK: children experiencing an inability to concentrate, becoming agitated, aggressive, dizzy and experiencing nightmares. For those of you interested in the research and articles out there I will compile a list and post it later.
My hope for this Blog is that we will get enough posts that I can start contacting Pediatricians and ER departments to help raise awareness about the effects children are experiencing from Tamiflu. At the very least so they can warn parents to keep a close eye on their child if prescribed this drug. I personally do not feel that this drug needs to be pulled off the market as I'm sure for some serious cases and immunocomprimised patients this drug may be of some benefit. However I think once people understand the real chance of experiencing some potentially serious side effects that most people will agree it is not worth the 1.5 days that Tamiflu reduces the flu by. Tamiflu actual does nothing to reduce the severity of the flu symptoms, it only decreases the length of the flu-again that just doesn't seem worth it to me.