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Bird Flu May Be Developing Drug Resistance

Posted by Zonk on

Pingular writes "The virus currently causing bird flu in humans may be developing resistance to the only drug that can so far combat the infection. From the article: 'A previous paper in the journal Nature described a single case of drug resistance in a patient being treated for avian flu. However, in this case the patient had been given low doses of Tamiflu before becoming infected, as a family member had been stricken. Lead researcher Dr Jeremy Farrar described the latest findings as "very worrying" - but said they were not surprising.'"

2 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Possible alternative by fionbio · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Arbidol (in Russian) is virtually unknown outside Russia, while it seems that it was shown to be able to defeat bird flu virus. For some discussions in English, look e.g. here.

    I've heard that Tamiflu is preferred for political reasons. Maybe there's actually something wrong with Arbidol, but here in Moscow they claim that Arbidol can cure bird flu in their rather widespread advertisements and aren't driven to court for that.

  2. Re:Tamiflu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My girlfriend is a microbiologist with a specialization in human pathogens, so if anybody would be an expert here it is her.

    And she says that in the early stages of a bird flu outbreak, Tamiflu is an effective counter to it. Yes at medically useful doses it has a chance of killing you, but that chance is significantly lower than your chance of dying WIHTOUT it.

    The problem comes when it reaches the epidemic stage. You see Tamiflu WILL NOT CURE an infection, it only gives the body enough lead time to build up specialized immunity cells to fight off the infection. During this entire period the virus is still active inside the patient, and still replicating (just at a vastly loweer and non-life-threatening rate). The end result is that it turns patients into incubators for the evolution of resistant strains. The more people that take Tamiflu, the higher a chance for a resistant strain to develop.

    The horror story of this is that Tamiflu-using patients are STILL contagious, and this is an airborne disease. With flu-like symptoms, there is almost no chance that an infected person will be quarantined in time to prevent them infecting others. As the resistant strains enter the general population, furhter Tamiflu treatments result in even MORE resistant strains being developed. Eventually the amount of Tamiflu required to recover from the virus will be so high that you have a better chance of survival WITHOUT Tamiflu.

    And while edpidemiology resources are being devoted to making the Tamiflu patent holder wealthier, they are not being devoted to the creation and production of a brd-flu VACCINE.

    And in the end, thanks to Tamiflu and money-hungry politicians, we end up with a new Smallpox.

    A much better viewpoint on a potential bird-flu epidemic is to flatly IGNORE Tamiflu, and nip the potential evloution war we cannot win in the bud. Instead devote all the Tamiflu production resources to producing a vaccine for the non-human bird-flu strain, and begin mass vaccination of domestic bird populations. This will slow down the spread of the virus to the human population, as well as giving us a biological base for a human-usable vaccine.

    Then when the human jump ACTUALLY occurs, it is a relatively simple matter of biological cut/paste with the human strain to create a human-usable vaccine. The same manufacturing and distributing capacity used for mass domestic bird vaccination can then be easilly switched to human vaccination.

    Poof! Bird-flu scare solved, loss of life minized, and all for FAR CHEAPER than the cash we will have to spend (and lose) taking the Tamiflu route.