Pharmaceutical makers reported 63 deaths in April 2004 suspected of being linked to medicines, a semigovernmental agency said Tuesday.
The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency, an independent administrative corporation launched that month, began making public on its Web site Tuesday all side effects cases reported by drug makers. The April 2004 report is its first.
The agency showed on its Web site 2,477 cases of side effects from 732 medicines that month, including the 63 deaths from 37 medicines -- all prescription drugs.
Of the 63 deaths, 12 were due to interstitial pneumonia from Iressa, a drug used for lung cancer, five from effects of the cancer drug Taxotere and four from side effects of Rheumatrex, a rheumatism drug, it said.
Previously, only serious side effects had been made public if the symptoms were not written in documents attached to the medicines or if the cases led to rewriting of the documents.
In fiscal 2004 -- from April 2004 to last March -- 1,872 cases of side effects had been made public, despite 25,448 cases being reported by drugmakers. The publicized cases account for only 7 percent of the reported cases.
The decision to make all cases public was made in response to requests from patients suffering side effects of drugs.