Avian Flu: Tamiflu Resistance?

A disturbing report in The Times:

A CONSIGNMENT of antiviral drugs bought by the Government for £186 million to protect the public against a bird flu pandemic could be rendered useless after the emergence of a resistant strain of the virus.

Experts in Hong Kong gave warning yesterday that the human H5N1 virus which surfaced in northern Vietnam this year was showing resistance to Tamiflu, the drug widely considered the best chance of protecting the population.
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Describing the case of Tamiflu-resistance, William Chui, of the Department of Pharmacology at the Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, yesterday urged drug manufacturers to make more effective versions of Relenza, another antiviral also known to be effective in battling H5N1.

“There are now resistant H5N1 strains appearing, and we can’t totally rely on one drug [Tamiflu],” Professor Chui said, adding that general viral resistance to Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, was also thought to be growing in Japan.

Now as we know, and this report confirms, an influenza pandemic is a certainty at some point, next year, five, ten years away. Whether it is avian flu is as yet unknown, of course, but some form of flu is going to sweep round the world at some point, as it has done in the past.

And to find that one of the candidate strains is already showing resistance  to one of the only two drugs we have to treat the symptoms (it’s worth noting that we still have not cured anyone anywhere of a viral disease. We can, as long as they don’t mutate too quickly, like AIDs or flu, vaccinate against them, we can treat and alleviate symptoms, but we do not have a cure for any viral disease at all and never have had.)

Looks like it might be worth adding a few packs of Relenza to that Tamiflu you have stockpiled. And, please, don’t use it until such a pandemic does occur, for that will just encourage the evolution of strains resistant to that drug as well.