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judith richards wrote: > > Camilla Flintermann wrote: > >Dear friends-- Here are a few items from the talk which Dominic > Marchese > >gave to our support group (Oxford,Ohio) last week. > > >*Comtan / Comtess (Entacapone) is soon to be available in the US , and > like > >Tasmar, will probably still require some liver monitoring > > It was my understanding that Entacapone would not require liver > monitoring. Joe Bruman...where are you? That's my understanding too. I expect the results discussed by Drs. Heinonen and Watkins will be mentioned in the entacapone Product Description when it becomes available here. The fact that entacapone and tolcapone have alliterative names and are both COMT inhibitors doesn't imply any similarity in liver effects. The sinister thing about the very rare type of liver failure caused by hepatitis B virus and by certain drugs is that the ALT monitoring provides only an indirect warning, which may or may not appear in time to avoid a crisis. I believe there have been cases (unrelated to tolcapone) where the elevated ALT levels actually declined, just before the liver crisis appeared. Cheers, Joe -- J. R. Bruman (818) 789-3694 3527 Cody Road Sherman Oaks, CA 91403-5013