July 16, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
Findings reported in Science help explain why Spanish flu was so lethal -
The 1918 Spanish flu was a global disaster, killing an estimated 20 to 50 million people, many of them otherwise healthy adults. By partially reconstructing the Spanish flu virus, researchers have now discovered at least part of what made the virus so lethal, thus providing essential information for influenza drug and vaccine research.
The research appears in the 7 October issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
The Spanish flu virus is more closely related to avian flu viruses than other human flu viruses. Many experts say that it is only a matter of time before an avian flu outbreak occurs in humans and develops into a global pandemic, potentially costing millions of lives.
Therapies against a new flu strain would need to disarm the parts of the virus that do the most damage to the body. In order to learn which components of the virus would be the best targets for such therapies, Terrence Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his colleagues revisited the 1918 Spanish flu virus.
Their results may also provide a benchmark for measuring the potential virulence of future flu strains as they emerge.
Using the virus’ genome sequence, whose final three genes are being published simultaneously this week in Nature, Tumpey’s group created a live virus with all eight of the Spanish flu viral genes. The genome sequence information was recovered in fragments from lung autopsy materials and lung tissues from a flu victim who was buried in the Alaskan permafrost in 1918.
July 12, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
Governor M. Jodi Rell today announced that she has formally requested that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) release to Connecticut 134,000 treatment courses of antiviral medications, as well as personal protective equipment and respiratory protection devices, in response to the swine flu outbreak. The CDC makes the supplies available, but individual states must indicate their formal acceptance of the treatment courses, which the Governor did today.
The Governor’s request was for 25 percent of Connecticut’s allotment from the Strategic National Stockpile. This amount will augment more than 11,000 antiviral treatment courses that Connecticut already has on hand from a purchase made in 2006, as part of the State’s preparedness efforts.
“I formalized this request to the CDC because preparation is the very best action we can take to protect our citizens against the swine flu,” Governor Rell said. “While there is no vaccine yet for swine flu, antiviral medications can shorten the time and cut down on the severity of the symptoms. We want to make sure that we have ample supplies of these medications to ensure their availability to anyone who may contract the virus.”
CDCs Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) has large quantities of medicine and medical supplies to protect the American public if there is a public health emergency (terrorist attack, flu outbreak, earthquake). For more information on the SNS, visit http://www.bt.cdc.gov/stockpile.
There are no confirmed cases in Connecticut, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed a total of 40 cases of swine flu in the United States. The confirmed cases have been identified in California (7), Kansas (2), New York (28), Ohio (1), and Texas (2).
July 12, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
Treatment with the oral antiviral oseltamivir combined with post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) of people exposed to infected individuals could be one of the most cost-effective strategies for reducing illness and death during an influenza pandemic according to recent modeling research published in Value in Health by Beate Sander et al., University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The objective of the study was to analyze, from a US societal perspective, the potential economic impact of a number of key mitigation strategies that may be considered in the event of a pandemic.
July 12, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
Influenza’s ability to resist the effects of cheap and popular antiviral agents in Asia and Russia should serve as a cautionary tale about U.S. plans to use the antiviral Tamiflu in the event of widespread avian flu infection in humans, scientists say.
Researchers analyzed almost 700 genome sequences of avian influenza strains to document where and when the virus developed resistance to a class of antiviral drugs called adamantanes and how far resistant strains spread. The analysis suggests that widespread antiviral drug use can accelerate the evolution of drug resistance in viruses, and that resistant strains can emerge and spread rapidly.
The results should serve as a warning to those who consider Tamiflu the next great antiviral medication, the researchers say. Stockpiling Tamiflu has become a standard part of many government, business and health organization plans to prepare for a long-feared pandemic flu outbreak, especially in the event that avian flu mutates enough to infect and be easily transmitted among humans.
“We can’t necessarily say what we’ve seen in adamantanes is predictive of what will happen with Tamiflu. But in the larger dynamic, perhaps it serves as a cautionary tale,” said Daniel Janies, senior author of the study and an associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University.
“Fighting infection is an arms race, and if we’re not smart about how we use our arms and understand the evolutionary implications, then we will have ongoing and accelerating problems with drug-resistant microorganisms.”
Resistance to adamantanes among strains of seasonal influenza spiked in Asia in 2002, and by 2006 the agents were considered virtually worthless worldwide as a treatment for the flu because more than 90 percent of the strains had developed a resistance to the drugs.
With that knowledge, Janies and colleagues analyzed hundreds of avian flu genomes isolated from avian, feline and human hosts between 1996 and 2007. They found that about one-third of those samples carried mutations enabling the virus strains to resist the effects of adamantane drugs.
The researchers also looked at resistance to oseltamivir-based agents (Tamiflu is the brand name for oseltamivir phosphate), but found that fewer than 1 percent of all of the samples were resistant to that class of drugs. Different classes of antivirals target influenza in different ways in the hosts’ cells.
Janies and researchers from the University of Colorado and Kansas State University also designed a four-dimensional interactive map that traces the resistant avian flu lineages, showing over time where they originated and where they moved, mostly across Asia, but also to one European site in Belgium. The map is projected onto a virtual globe using Google Earth and can be downloaded at: http://supramap.osu.edu/supramap/files/h5n1_677.kmz.
The study is published online in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution.
July 12, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that the United States will provide 420,000 treatment courses of Tamiflu (Oseltamavir) to the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) to fight the novel H1N1 influenza in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Secretary made the announcement while attending a series of high-level meetings for health ministers throughout the Americas in Cancun, Mexico.
“The U.S. is committed to supporting and enhancing the health security in the region by reducing transmission and severity of illness,” Sebelius told officials in Cancun. “Viruses know no borders. The U.S. recognizes that a novel virus such as the H1N1 is a burden borne by all nations, and all of us have a responsibility to help support one another in the face of this challenge.”
On June 23, HHS received a request from PAHO to partner with the U.S. government to increase the PAHO stockpile of Tamiflu in the regional stockpile available for Latin America and the Caribbean countries. PAHO is working to ensure that its member countries have the capacity and resources to respond to outbreaks of H1N1.
HHS holds approximately 50 million courses of antiviral medications in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). In April, HHS deployed 11 million treatment courses from the SNS to the states across the country to fight the H1N1 influenza. Since then, HHS has purchased antiviral drugs to replenish the SNS along with an additional 2 million treatment courses.
July 12, 2009 - Posted by alismed - 0 Comments
Suspected side effects to swine flu antiviral medicines can now be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) via a new dedicated webpage (http://www.mhra.gov.uk/swineflu).
The online system is based on the highly successful Yellow Card Scheme and is designed to make completing a report quick and easy for the public as well as healthcare professionals. This will assist the MHRA in efficiently monitoring the safety of the swine flu antiviral medicines, Tamiflu and Relenza, as their use increases during the swine flu pandemic.
MHRA Director of Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines, Dr June Raine, said Tamiflu and Relenza are acceptably safe and most people will not suffer any side effects.
