Bird Flu Resisting Tamiflu
In a development health experts are calling alarming, two bird flu patients in Vietnam died after developing resistance to Tamiflu, the key drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a large-scale outbreak.
The experts said the deaths were disturbing because the two girls had received early and aggressive treatment with Tamiflu and had gotten the recommended doses.
The new report suggests that the doses doctors now consider ideal may be too little. Previous reports of resistance involved people who had taken the drug in low doses; inadequate doses of medicine are known to promote resistance by allowing viruses or bacteria to mutate and make a resurgence.
Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, called the deaths frightening and said they demonstrate the dangers of hoarding drugs.
“People who stockpile will naturally share or take drugs at the wrong dose, and that’s really a bad idea,” said Moscona, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
Source: CNN.
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