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It makes more sense to just ensure that you eat well and thus develop
and maintain a strong immune system. And that means cutting out the
junk food, the sugar-laden crap and fake fats like margarine, and of
course supplement with the best anti-viral/anti-biotic known to man -
vitamin C.
vaccines are superflous to good health.
TC
fresh~horses wrote:
> Viruses develop resistance to flu drugs
>
> By HELEN BRANSWELL
>
> Wednesday, September 21, 2005 Posted at 9:02 PM EDT
>
> Canadian Press
>
> Toronto - Human flu viruses are becoming increasingly resistant to
> the class of drugs known as adamantanes, one of only two existing
> classes of flu drugs, a new study released Thursday shows.
>
> The authors say their findings call into question the future usefulness
> of the adamantane or M2 inhibitor drugs - a warning echoed by a
> leading antiviral expert who was not involved in the work.
>
> That independent expert, Dr. Frederick Hayden suggested that in light
> of the findings the drugs amantadine and rimantadine should not play a
> significant role in drug stockpiles put together to help a country
> weather a flu pandemic.
>
> "I think that these data present real concerns about how can we use
> this class in the future. And it certainly says it makes little sense
> to make it an important part of drug stockpiles for pandemic
> response," said Dr. Hayden, a scientist at the University of Virginia
> who is on secondment to the World Health Organization.
>
> "It takes one of the arrows out of our quiver, as it were."
>
> Only one of the drugs, amantadine, is sold in Canada. The Public Health
> Agency of Canada has plans to add substantial quantities of the drug to
> the country's pandemic stockpile.
>
> The M2 inhibitors are off-patent and much cheaper than the only other
> class of flu drugs, the patent-protected neuraminidase inhibitors
> oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).
>
> The first author of the study was less definitive about the future of
> the drug, saying he felt it was too soon to consider the class lost for
> good.
>
> "It's hard to tell. We don't know exactly what caused the resistance.
> And it's possible that if it was caused by a spontaneous mutation the
> virus could mutate and go back the other way," said Rick Bright of
> the strain surveillance section of the influenza branch at the U.S.
> Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
>
> "I certainly wouldn't give up hope on any class of (flu) drugs at
> this point."
>
> But the paper itself warns agencies and governments purchasing pandemic
> stockpiles that amantadine and rimantadine "will probably no longer
> be effective for treatment or prophylaxis" - using the drugs to
> ward off illness - "in the event of a pandemic outbreak of
> influenza."
>
> Dr. Bright and his co-authors analyzed human flu viruses submitted to
> the CDC - in its role as a WHO influenza reference laboratory -
> between Oct. 1, 1994 and March 31, 2005. The aim was to see if the
> rates of resistance to the adamantane drugs changed over that period.
>
> The scientists screened more than 7,000 human influenza A viruses
> looking for specific genetic mutations known to confer resistance to
> the adamantane drugs.
>
> Rates of resistance started to rise in China in 2000 and spiked between
> 2002 and 2003. Additional spikes occurred in 2003 in viruses from Hong
> Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
>
> "Viruses collected in 2004 from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and
> China showed drug-resistance frequencies of 15 per cent, 23 per cent,
> 70 per cent and 74 per cent respectively," they wrote in the article,
> published by the medical journal The Lancet.
>
> The trend extends beyond Asia. Thirty per cent of Canadian viruses
> collected in 2005 and analyzed by the team were resistant to the drugs.
> Resistance rates were also significantly above historical values in a
> number of countries in South, Central and North America and in Europe.
>
> The authors can't say what is behind the increase in resistance but
> they hypothesize it may either be driven by high use of the drugs in
> parts of Asia, where they can be bought without prescription or because
> of a spontaneous mutation.
>
> While the development occurred almost in parallel - both timewise and
> geographically - with the explosion of outbreaks of the avian
> influenza strain known as H5N1, both Dr. Bright and Dr. Hayden felt the
> events were unrelated.
>
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050921.wfluu0921/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/
> fairuse
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