Scientists Find Avian Flu Virus Resistant to Drug Tamiflu
Posted on: Saturday, 15 October 2005, 09:00 CDT
Scientists find avian flu virus resistant to drug Tamiflu
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 14 (Xinhua)-- Scientists reported on Friday that an avian influenza virus isolated from a Vietnamese girl has been determined to be resistant to the drug Tamiflu.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, working with colleagues in Vietnam and Japan, reported that a young girl developed a strain of the virus that was highly resistant to the drug after taking a prophylactic dose of the drug.
The drug, produced by pharmaceutical firm Roche Inc. and also known as oseltamivir, has been expected as the front line of defense for a feared influenza pandemic. Countries are stockpiling millions of doses of Tamiflu with billions of dollars to forestall a global outbreak of influenza.
But the new findings, appearing in next week's edition of the journal Nature, suggest that health officials should also consider other options, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka, an international authority on influenza and the senior author of the paper.
"This is the first line of defense," said Kawaoka, a professor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "It is the drug many countries are stockpiling, and the plan is to rely heavily on it."
The team found several types in a mixture of H5N1 virus in the girl's sample had developed genetic mutations to make Tamiflu virtually worthless against it. And the virus mixture in a whole became partially resistant to the drug.
"Although our findings are based on a virus from only a single patient, they raise the possibility that it might be useful to stockpile zanamivir as well as oseltamivir in the event of an H5N1 influenza pandemic," the researchers wrote in the paper.
If avian influenza does emerge and becomes infectious from human to human, a scene that nearly all experts agree that will happen at some point in the future, an outbreak similar to the 1918 influenza pandemic could occur.
That pandemic killed as many as 50 million people, more than died on all the battlefields of World War I. Scientists and vaccine manufacturers would be in a race against time to produce enough doses to forestall disaster.
Drugs like Tamiflu, used in combination with quarantine, would be intended to slow the spread of the disease until a vaccine is produced.
Tamiflu and other anti-flu drugs are by no means a replacement or alternative to a vaccine. Effective vaccines can confer immunity, preventing the virus from gaining a toehold in the body, according to the researchers.
But it is unlikely sufficient quantities of a vaccine can be produced and stockpiled prior to the emergence of a new virus in human populations, the researchers said.
They suggested that health officials should consider stockpiling zanamivir, an older anti-flu drug, and recommending that only the therapeutic dosages of Tamiflu be administered to patients.
And it will be important to test the virus regularly to see if it is changing and becoming more resistant to drugs, they said.
Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS
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