MicrobeWorld

Confusing directions on liquid suspensions of the antiviral drug Tamiflu may inadvertantly cause parents to give their children either too little of the drug, impeding the child's recovery, or a toxic overdose, physicians warned today in a letter published in the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine. Prescriptions for the drug are often written with doses in fractions of a teaspoon, but the dropper packaged with the drug is marked in milligrams, requiring a difficult conversion of units, said Dr. Ruth Parker of the Emory University School of Medicine, lead author of the paper.

"It's an egregious error that there is a conflict in the prescription labeling instructions and the dosage device that comes in the exact same box," said co-author Dr. Michael Wolf of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It's incredibly confusing to parents."