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Influenza World brings you the latest news and updates in the flu field from around the world.

 
Resistance to flu drug widespread in US -study
02 March 2009

By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters Life!) - Virtually all cases of the most common strain of flu circulating in the United States now resist the main drug used to treat it, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.

CDC researchers said 98 percent of all flu samples from the H1N1 strain were resistant to Roche AG's Tamiflu, a pill that can both treat flu and prevent infection. Four patients infected with the resistant strain have died, including two children.

This year, H1N1 is the most common strain of flu in the United States, although the flu season is a mild one so far, and still below the levels considered an epidemic.

Few doctors even test patients for flu, and Tamiflu is not widely prescribed. But the news is sobering because the pill, known generically as oseltamivir, is one of the few weapons against influenza, which kills an estimated 36,000 people in the United States in an average year.

It is also considered a key weapon against a potential pandemic of a new type of influenza, and this study suggests the virus can rapidly evade its effects.

This season, nine children have died from influenza, most apparently healthy before they died of flu, the CDC reports.

Last flu season, only 19 percent of H1N1 viruses tested were Tamiflu-resistant, Dr. Nila Dharan and colleagues at the CDC reported.

"As of February 19, 2009, resistance to oseltamivir had been identified among 264 of 268 (98.5 percent) U.S. influenza A(H1N1) viruses tested," the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

YOUNG PATIENTS

They interviewed 99 patients and found 30 percent of them had been vaccinated against flu but became infected anyway. The vaccine is known not to fully protect against infection.

"Two patients died on the way to the hospital or in the emergency department. One patient was 4 years old and previously healthy, and one patient was 4 years old with neurological problems," Dharan's team wrote.

"Two deaths were among hospitalized patients, one patient was a 1-year-old with multiple medical problems and one patient, hospitalized for a stem cell transplant, was 22 years old and diagnosed with influenza infection on the fifth day of hospitalization," they added.

Dr. David Weinstock of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Dr. Gianna Zuccotti of Brigham and Women's Hospital, both in Boston, said the quick spread of Tamiflu-resistant flu had surprised doctors.

"Undoubtedly, new surprises await in the perpetual struggle with influenza as one thing is certain - the organism will continue to evolve," they wrote.

"For now, the best tools to mitigate influenza infection are tried-and-true - vaccination, social distancing, hand washing, and common sense."

GlaxoSmithKline, which makes the rival flu drug Relenza, said there was no indication influenza viruses were resistant to its drug. Relenza, known generically as zanamivir, is squirted into the nose and is used even less commonly than Tamiflu.

Flu already resists two older drugs, rimantadine and amantadine. There is no indication the two other types of season flu now circulating, H3N2 and influenza B, resist the effects of Tamiflu.

  • "I would describe flu as something that makes you feel very, very ill. You get a headache, aching bones, and are generally fed up"
  • "When I get flu symptoms I feel like a train has run over me"
  • "I felt very sick and, during the first week, I had high temperature. Flu was very different to a cold. I went back to work after two and a half weeks. Then I suffered a setback for another week"
  • "I run a guesthouse; flu would be a real pest for me. I couldn’t cook, I shouldn’t cook, and I wouldn’t cook, so I would need to get a lot of extra help in. It would cost me a lot more money. So flu’s a real problem, a right downturn"
  • "I work on my own and when I can’t work, I have to try not to infect my little children, so they avoid getting the flu as well"
  • "I feel a little numb, like I’m in another dimension. Because in general I have sore throat, headache, I feel all clogged-up. Usually a sensation like I’m floating in the air"
  • "Shivers, sweats, makes you ache. Last time I had flu I was off for two weeks"
  • "I think that I would probably be concerned that I would pass flu onto my children, who might not be able to deal with it as well as I would"
  • "Flu makes you feel like you’ve been hit over the head with a baseball bat. You don’t feel like you can get yourself out of bed as all your energy is drawn from you"
  • "I was incapable of working. It just wasn’t possible at all… and my flu dragged on for more than a week"
  • "I have no strength. It annoys me because I can do nothing, it seems like I’m wasting my time"
  • "Flu’s like being hit by a truck because you feel completely gone. There is no energy left in your body. You are suffering from high temperature. You’re sweating a lot and you feel really unwell"
  • "First of all infinite tiredness, then I feel like sleeping and don’t want to eat"
  • "I felt really miserable because my muscles and my bones were aching. Well, I can hardly describe it, I just felt really awful, absolutely miserable"
  • "It’s like there’s something huge treading on your head, like a deafening noise that destroys the eardrums"
  • "The fever was constantly rising – I immediately measured my temperature as soon as I got home. It was 41°C and it kept rising and I was wondering what’s going on. I was really scared! Everything was hurting and it all happened so fast. Flu came out of the blue"
  • "I always feel like my limbs have iron weights tied to them and I’m going to fall over any minute, a really stuffy runny nose and feel antisocial"
  • "I was totally dependent on others! I was incapable of doing anything at all"
  • "The real flu knocks you for six – you just don’t want to move or do anything. It’s not very nice"
  • "Not being able to go to work. Not being able to do the things I have to do at home and the commitments that I have day by day"