HALLUCINATIONS ALLEGEDLY LINKED TO EPOA New York doctor has written the New England Journal of Medicineto alert Amgen Inc. that its Epogen erythropoietin appeared to causevisual hallucinations in five patients..The patients, who had no delirium or psychosis, received the drug tocorrect their anemia incurred from dialysis to treat kidney failure..The hallucinations consisted of people or cartoon figures, or animalsor birds, wrote Dr. Herbert Steinberg of Long Island Jewish MedicalCenter in a letter published last week. "The patients were puzzledand curious but not terrified" by the hallucinations, he wrote..Four patients stopped taking Epogen, and their hallucinationsdisappeared within three weeks, according to Steinberg, only tocome back in two patients when the drug was resumed..In a written reply, Dr. Richard Stead, associate medical director ofthe Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen said, "It is not possible todetermine whether these events are sporadic or are related toerythropoietin." Stead reviewed Steinberg's information on fivecases and on sixother cases of hallucination reported out of morethan 85,000 patients receiving erythropoietin..Stead suggested that other drugs in the patients' complicatedmedical management might relate to the hallucinations.

-- Roberta Friedman, P

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