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Bent Willow wrote: > >We had a death of a PD person taking TASMAR here. A retired MD was on > >TASMAR. He was depressed about his condition and felt he was headed for > >stage 4+ or 5 fast. His death was self-induced . > > My husband had a similar reaction to Tasmar. Once we stopped the drug his > PD improved considerably. It is sad that no one thought to address the fact > that Tasmar might have been causing this physician's rapid decline. To Mary Ann and Will: That sounds possible but not likely. Like many other drugs, Tasmar may injure the liver in a small fraction of the users- If the injury is slow and cumulative then monitoring of certain enzymes in the blood, particularly ALT which is a sort of liver "distress signal" can give ample warning to stop taking the offending drug in time to avoid further injury. But one unusual form of liver damage is called "fulminant" liver failure because it can progress from no symptoms to life-threatening in less than a day, with the liver virtually destroyed. If that form occurs, then even a weekly blood test might not catch it in time. Fulminant hepatic failure (FHF) is always accompanied by dementia (confusion, disorientation, coma) caused by failure to get rid of ammonia, which then poisons the brain. I'm sad to read of your friend's suicide, but it doesn't sound like he was demented. In any case an autopsy, or at least a report by an attending physician to the FDA, which maintains reference files on such things, would certainly have been useful to future research. In sympathy, Joe -- J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013