Tamiflu-Resistant Virus Identified November 21
It seems like the swine flu saga may be far from over, as cases have been cropping up around the world of swine flu strains that seem to be resistant to the drugs that are currently being administered to fight it.
In the state of North Carolina, four such cases have been confirmed at the Duke University Medical Center. The virus seems to be resistant to Tamiflu, one of the drugs used to treat severe cases of swine flu.
Across the Atlantic in London, British health officials are also currently investigating how a drug-resistant strain of swine flu is spreading from person to person. Five such cases of patients who are infected with a virus that is resistant to Tamiflu have been confirmed in Wales, as reported by the Health Protection Agency in the UK.
There were also four other patients who were infected with H1N1 in the UK that had the same genetic mutation, although one of them was helped with Tamiflu while the rest seem to have responded to the other medication used to treat swine flu – Relenza.
What the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are looking into now is the fact that these occurrences may be an indication that the H1N1 virus is mutating. The CDC has since launched an investigation into these findings.
The four cases identified at the Duke University Medical Center reportedly involve patients who were very ill at the onset. The patients reportedly may have caught the virus in a cancer unit and three of them have already died.
The British Health Protection Agency reportedly said in a statement, however, that at present they “believe that the risk to the general healthy population is low.”
Another investigation is also being done, this time by the World Health Organization, in Norway. There are reportedly variant swine flu cases there that have been linked to two deaths and one severe case in the country.
Tags: mutated swine flu, swine flu mutation, swine flu prevention, swine flu protection, tamiflu resistant swine flu