Posted on 10/07/2005 3:39:56 AM PDT by fifthvirginia
But do they WORK?
Gee, coming from "The Walkin' Dude" himself, that's scary!
Seriously, since our Chinese "friends" are loading fowl with anti-virals ( thus breeding strains of flu that are resistant ) and some reports indicate some of the anti-viral medicines aren't effective. it's cause to worry. See tagline...
Tamiflu will work FYI. It can be ordered online. Protect yourself, if you have the means.
I just recently read a report that Tamiflu probably would NOT be effective for this new (expected) flu outbreak.
Who knows?!?
I haven't heard this. If true...thats not good. I'd liken it to an indirect form of bio-terrorism towards the West.
I thought it was already reported that Tamiflu was ineffective, so far, when tested against the current strains of H51N?
As as far as a vaccine, I know I read that until it mutates to a person/person strain, there's no point in making a vaccine.
Good God- I missed that one entirely- what year was it on?
Is there a better way to combat this thing?
Probably not- it's like the best defense against an atom bomb- "don't be there when it goes off."
HONG KONG, Sept 30 (Reuters) - A strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus that may unleash the next global flu pandemic is showing resistance to Tamiflu, the antiviral drug that countries around the world are now stockpiling to fend off the looming threat.
Experts in Hong Kong said on Friday that the human H5N1 strain which surfaced in northern Vietnam this year had proved to be resistant to Tamiflu, a powerful antiviral drug which goes by the generic name, oseltamivir.
They urged drug manufacturers to make more effective versions of Relenza, another antiviral that is also known to be effective in battling the much feared H5N1. Relenza is inhaled.
"There are now resistant H5N1 strains appearing, and we can't totally rely on one drug (Tamiflu)," William Chui, honorary associate professor with the department of pharmacology at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, told Reuters.
Chui was referring to the Tamiflu-resistant strain of H5N1 in Vietnam. Chui also said general viral resistance to Tamiflu was growing in Japan, where doctors habitually prescribe the drug to fight the common influenza.
"Manufacturers should think about producing an injectable form of Relenza because resistance to Tamiflu has been seen in Japan and Vietnam. Also with injections, high doses can be given where necessary and onset time is a lot faster," Chui said.
Drugs that are administered intravenously can be better absorbed in patients who have stomach and acidity problems, another expert said.
"We don't have to worry about absorption, injections take drugs right in. But if the patient takes them orally, maybe some amounts won't be absorbed or some may be destroyed by stomach acids," said pharmacist Raymond Mak at Queen Mary Hospital.
Intravenous Relenza would also ensure faster onset, which would be critical in patients who are seriously ill.
"Orally taken drugs take three to four hours to reach maximum blood concentration and three to four hours is very critical in severe cases. But injectable Relenza takes only 30 minutes to reach maximum blood concentration, this is a huge difference," Chui said.
With an intravenous antiviral, doctors can also vary the doses.
While the H5N1 virus is now mostly passed directly from bird to human, health experts have warned that it is just a matter of time before it mutates into a form that is easily transmissible between people. When that happens, it may result in as many as 150 million human deaths.
Two reports in The Lancet medical journal this month said that resistance to anti-flu drugs was growing worldwide.
In places such as China, drug resistance exceeded 70 percent, suggesting that drugs like amantadine and rimantadine will probably no longer be effective for treatment or as a preventive in a pandemic outbreak of flu, the reports said.
A few notes:
1. We now know that the 1918 virus was a pure bird flu. It didn't need to mix with pigs or humans to become deadly.
So we can stop worrying about some hapless Chinese pig or Vietnamese farmer providing the fatal improvement; the virus may be able to mutate right in some duck or chicken and then jump straight to us.
Our concern is that the H5 type [such as the new avian flu strains] might be going down a similar path [of adapting to humans] as the 1918 virus did.
Practically any of the bird viruses that we can find with some of these changes tend to be the highly pathogenic avian viruses, like those in Asia.
This suggests to us that these viruses are acquiring mutations that make them more human-adapted.
So far it's a lucky thing. These viruses can get into a person, and they can kill. But they can't yet spread from person to person. The race is on now to figure out what changes are crucial to allowing the virus to be transmissible from one person to another.
Everyone is correct to be concerned [about a possible new epidemic]. The 1918 studies only increase the concern. We need to try to catch this thing before it gets out of the box.
2. CIDRAP offers a new update on laboratory-confirmed human cases of H5N1 avian influenza.
As always, it includes both official and unofficial tallies:
Officially, 116 cases and 60 deaths (51.7% mortality).
Unofficially, 124 cases and 65 deaths (52.4% mortality).
While the cases are still comparatively few, it seems strange that mortality should remain so high.
The consensus seems to be that H5N1 will trade off its lethality as it learns how to infect humans directly. Otherwise, we're in really big trouble.
MA
It is easy to make vaccines for the bird flu.
The problem is we don't know what particular strain of flu will make the jump. The strain that makes the jump isn't around right now, so the one that does will certainly be different than today's strain.
The vaccine you develop today may not work at all on the virus which eventually comes out.
There is little sense stockpiling 200 million doses if you don't know it will work.
But then, it just might. So you should have some vaccines ready to go just in case but don't spend $10 billion doing it.
Not according to Recombinomics.
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/10050503/1918_Recombination_Confirmed.html
However, the 1918 pandemic strain was not an avian strain. It was a recombinant between a swine virus, like the H1N1 classical swine virus from Iowa in 1930, and an H1N1 human virus, like the WSN/33 virus from a human in London in 1933. This observation had been made previously, based on the published sequences of five of the eight 1918 genes.
The same relationship is seen in the three newly published genes, PB2, PB2, and PA. In each case the sequences from H1N1 classical swine and H1N1 human isolates in the early 1930's form complimentary polymorphisms, much like the 2001 H5N1 co-circulating sequences in Hong Kong.
The evolution by recombination is the mechanism of rapid change employed by most if not all viruses. H5N1 efficiently evolves via recombination, and the latest sequences of the three polymerase genes from 1918 show that the same mechanism was used for all eight of the 1918 genes.
Are the RATS now going to blame Bush because:
a) He hasn't reacted quick enough
b) There isn't enough vaccines to go around
c) Using the military just proves that Bush is a fascist
d) all of the above
This may sound trite, but WASH YOUR HANDS.
They are giving their chickens Amantadine, an anti-viral.
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