Bird flu news surge spiked Tamiflu sales; more prescriptions for kids

Sales increased so sharply, in fact, that drug maker Roche pulled Tamiflu from the retail pipeline in several countries, including Canada and the U.S., saying the limited supply for the 2005-2006 influenza season was in danger of being depleted before flu started circulating.

Ortiz and colleagues in the CDC's influenza division looked at data from Medco Health Solutions, which processes benefits claims for insurance companies that provide health coverage to 55 million Americans. They could not see the names of people who bought the drug, but had information like gender, age, general health status and zip code.

On average there was a three-fold increase over the number of prescriptions filled in the corresponding period in 2004, Ortiz reported.

In 2005 the majority of the prescriptions were filled by people aged 50 and older, which was also the pattern in 2004. That would be expected; older people are at greater risk of serious complications if they catch the flu.

But there was more than a seven-fold increase in prescriptions filled for children aged one to four and five to 17, age groups which are rarely prescribed antiviral drugs. The increase in prescriptions filled for infants was forty-fold, but that figure is misleading because the year before there were virtually no prescriptions filled for children in that age group.

Sales data like these can't prove parents were trying to protect their children, Ortiz said, but they do support that theory.

Another observation of the work was that the growth in sales was in what the medical community calls "the worried well" - people who aren't sick but who are anxious about health threats. Thirty per cent of the prescriptions written during that period were for people who didn't have any chronic diseases - in other words, people for whom a bout of flu poses the lowest risk.

The researchers also looked at who was writing the prescriptions - and whether doctors were stockpiling drug themselves.

They sent out a questionnaire to 961 doctors in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico who are members of the infectious diseases society's emerging infections network. Questions included whether the respondent had been asked by patients, family or friends for a Tamiflu prescription, whether they complied with the requests and whether they had a cache of drugs for themselves.

Seventeen per cent of 480 doctors who replied admitted they did have personal supplies of the sought-after drug.

Forty-two per cent said they'd been asked for Tamiflu prescriptions for stockpiling purposes in the previous three months. Only eight per cent of respondents said they honoured more than half of the requests when asked by patients; 10 per cent admitted they had written prescriptions for family and friends.

People who went to older doctors had a better shot at getting a prescription than those who went to doctors who had more recently graduated from medical school.

"The more experienced doctors, for reasons we could not ascertain, had the highest prescription rates," Ortiz said.

Infectious diseases specialists and general practitioners wrote more Tamiflu prescriptions than other doctors.

Read the full article here

Broken Link? If the link to the original article is broken or has been altered you can view the article by clicking here.