Bird flu virus resisting Tamiflu in Thailand

The link is not currently working, so I'm not including, but I recently read an interesting article that appeared in The Bangkok Post.

A research study in Thailand found signs that the H5N1 bird flu virus was developing resistance to Tamiflu (oseltamivir).

This is bad news for everyone in the established medical system who is pinning all their hopes of defeating this disease on that drug.

The team allegedly found actual changes in the neuraminidase protein (which is how the virus breaks out of infected cells to infect more cells). Tamiflu works by inhibiting the function of neuraminidase. If the virus cannot break out of the infected cells, they cannot infect news ones.

The study will soon be published in the Emerging Infectious
Diseases Journal and Journal of Virological Methods.

Previously, resistance to Tamiflu was found in some H5N1 samples taken from Vietnamese victims in 2005.

There's been no known human to human transmission of Tamiflu-resistant bird flu, but such strains could still infect chickens and ducks.

Whenever anyone is diagnosed with avian flu, everybody around them, all family, friends and neighbors, are also being given treatments of Tamiflu.

This wholesale use of the drug is likely encouraging the H5N1 virus to develop into resistant strains.

The widespread use of Tamiflu to treat flu victims has also contributed to the finding that the human flu H3N2 virus also also developed resistance to Tamiflu.



Resistance to Tamiflu Discovered
Resistance to Tamiflu Discovered