A Food and Drug Administration panel on Tuesday will review reports of abnormal behavior and other brain effects in more than 1,800 children who had taken the flu medicine Tamiflu since its approval in 1999, including 55 in the USA. Twenty-two of the U.S. reports were considered ‘serious,’ with symptoms such as convulsions, delirium or delusions, says Terry Hurley, spokesman for drugmaker Roche Laboratories. None of the U.S. cases resulted in death. But in Japan, Hurley says, five deaths have been reported in children under 16 as a result of neurological or psychiatric problems. ‘Four were fatal falls, and one was encephalitis in a patient with leukemia,’ he says. In addition, in people ages 17 to 21, there were two deaths in Japan, one a ‘fatal accident with abnormal behavior,’ Hurley says, and the second as a result of encephalopathy, a brain infection. Seven adult deaths attributed to neuropsychiatric problems also have been reported in Japan. But Hurley says there is no evidence Tamiflu caused the episodes and notes that similar symptoms have been reported in flu patients who had not taken Tamiflu. He says clinical studies have found no increased risk for psychiatric or neurologic […]