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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Doctors are reporting a severe form of swine flu that goes straight to the lungs, causing severe illness in otherwise healthy young people and requiring expensive hospital treatment, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms. "If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.'' Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.

Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have demonstrated a more effective treatment for bacterial pneumonia following influenza. They found that the antibiotics clindamycin and azithromycin, which kill bacteria by inhibiting their protein synthesis, are more effective than a standard first-line treatment with the "beta-lactam" antibiotic ampicillin, which causes the bacteria to lyse, or burst. The finding is important because pneumonia, rather than the influenza itself, is a principal cause of death from influenza in children and the elderly. During pandemics—such as the one that may arise from avian influenza—up to 95 percent of influenza deaths are due to pneumonia....

Close window Published online: 25 January 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070122-10 Fresh light thrown on tragic drug trialAnimal tests may have missed danger because monkeys 'too clean'.Michael Hopkin Animal tests had given little sign that the clinical trial in humans would go terribly wrong, landing the experimental subjects in the hospital. Edmond Terakopian/PA. Immunologists have a new theory to explain why the devastating effects of the experimental drug TGN1412 were not spotted in animal tests. The 'superantibody' drug put six volunteers in intensive care in a London hospital last March. Animals used in preclinical tests for TGN1412, researchers now say, lack...

The trial of a new drug in a London hospital that nearly killed six men three months ago and left them in intensive care for weeks has prompted numerous reports and recommendations that will change the way drugs are tested. But the six men, who were all young and healthy just months ago, now suffer from serious medical problems, and they have been unable to get any of the drug companies involved in the trial to cover their medical expenses, or provide compensation — other than a one-time payment of under $20,000 apiece. In recent weeks, lab tests and medical...

Scientists believe they may have found a way to beat even the most powerful strains of flu and maybe even Sars. Researchers at Imperial College London say they are able to control the immune system's response to flu. Previous studies have suggested the immune system may sometimes do more harm than good when it comes to flu. This is because it responds too strongly to an attack, preventing recovery and in extreme cases attacking the body and causing death. A study published in The Lancet late last year suggested this was why flu can turn from a nuisance virus into...