Resistance can develop fast with swine flu: report
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The H1N1 swine flu virus can develop resistance quickly to antivirals used to treat it, U.S. doctors reported on Friday.
Government researchers reported on the cases of two people with compromised immune systems who developed drug-resistant strains of virus after less than two weeks on therapy.
Bacteria quickly develop resistance to antibiotics, which must be used carefully. Viruses can do the same and doctors worried about resistance had recommended against using antivirals for flu except in patients who really needed them.
"While the emergence of drug-resistant influenza virus is not in itself surprising, these cases demonstrate that resistant strains can emerge after only a brief period of drug therapy," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"We have a limited number of drugs available for treating influenza and these findings provide additional urgency to efforts to develop antivirals that attack influenza virus in novel ways," he said in a statement.
Swine flu emerged a year ago in the United States and Mexico and spread around the world in just six weeks, killing thousands of people. It hit children and young adults especially hard.
Older antiviral drugs did not work against it -- they do not work against seasonal flu, either -- but Roche AG's Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, did. It was not widely used, however.
Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues studied two flu patients who had immune limitations due to past blood stem cell transplants. They were treated with Tamiflu.
Writing in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Taubenberger and colleague Dr. Matthew Memoli said the virus infecting one patient developed a drug-resistant mutation after nine days and the other after 14 days of treatment.
And one of the patients also developed resistance against a second antiviral, Biocryst's peramivir, which is an experimental drug approved for emergency intravenous use in patients who cannot take Tamiflu.
This patient continued getting worse despite 24 days on Tamiflu and was given peramivir for 10 days.
Finally, GlaxoSmithkline's flu drug Relenza, known generically as zanamivir, did work and the patient recovered, the researchers said.
"These cases of rapid appearance of drug-resistant 2009 H1N1 influenza in immune-compromised patients are worrisome and should prompt clinicians to reconsider how they use available flu drugs," Memoli said.
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Ab Osterhaus, Declan Butler and Nature Magazine are all culpable in wanting the drug companies to sell billions of pounds worth of swine flu/bird flu drugs. They are all friends of the large pharmaceuticals. What they did not want to see was the alternative strategy emerges of addressing the global threat at source.
For the only way to stop bird flu/Swine flu et al indefinitely is to address the problem at source and never let it happen in the first place. It is the only way.
http://avian-influenza.cirad.fr/content/download/1931/11789/file/Kennedy-F-Shortridge.pdf
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/tag/world-innovation-foundation
Otherwise it will one day come back with a vengeance and wipe out a quarter of humanity. The Spanish Flu that killed up to 100 million (a Swine flu variant) will then be seen as the minor event in the world’s history of global pandemics.
Funny how money always rises above human life itself !
The facts are taking the most powerful country in the world the USA as an example,
Detection
Time Scale – 0 months
Swine Flu first detected – Influenza A, Novel H1N1 “swine flu” was first detected in Mexico City and was made public March 18, 2009. Therefore the first causality was probably at the beginning of March 2009 taking into account the incubation period.
First Death in USA
Time Scale + 2-months later
at the end of April 2009
1st Vaccine Approved
Time Scale + 6 months 2 weeks
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new swine flu vaccine for use in the United States on September 15, 2009.
Vaccine 1st ready for use in USA
Time Scale + 7 months 1 week
The vaccine was first ready from mass production and used on 5th October 2009 in the USA
Most Vaccinated City in the USA by 22nd March 2010
Time Scale + 1 year 1month 1 week
Massachusetts vaccinated more residents against the swine flu and seasonal flu in the fall and winter than any other state.
Up to the end of Winter (March 2010) – The Massachusetts Department of Public Health says 36 percent of residents were inoculated against the swine flu, also known as H1N1, compared with 21 percent nationally. Seasonal flu vaccinations were administered to 57 percent of the population, compared with 37 percent nationwide.
A mere 36% in one USA city and where nationally only 21% had the vaccine by March 22nd 2010.
The Spanish flu of 1917/18 did its worst between week 16 and week 26.
Considering this fact by the time we get any vaccine, most of us will be well dead. Fact not fiction. Therefore the vaccine strategy is totally flawed and we have to move from this stupid strategy to a standpoint of never letting it happen in the first place – the preventative strategy not cure strategy and the only strategy that will actually work.
That strategy is – http://avian-influenza.cirad.fr/content/download/1931/11789/file/Kennedy-F-Shortridge.pdf
1. Moskowitz DW, Johnson FE. The central role of angiotensin I-converting enzyme in vertebrate pathophysiology. Curr Top Med Chem. 2004;4(13):1433-54. PMID: 15379656 (For PDF file, click on paper #6 at: http://www.genomed.com/index.cfm?action=investor&drill=publications)
2. Section 2151 of the Project BioShield II Act of April 28, 2005 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s109-975)
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