Thursday, January 18, 2007
Partially Tamiflu resistant bird flu strain found in Egypt - WHO
On Thursday, WHO(The World Health Organization), issued a statement regarding two people that died last month from the H5N1 strain of Bird flu. WHO said that the strain that infected these two people, is the version that has shown “Moderate” resistance to the bird flu drug Tamiflu.
Known as ‘294S’, the mutated strain was first detected in 2005 in a teenage girl in Vietnam who survived, but this is the first evidence of it spreading beyond Asia, it said.
The United Nations agency said that the latest cases did not change its recommendation to treat bird flu patients with Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir. Made by Swiss-based Roche, the flu drug is being stockpiled by governments worldwide for use in the event of an influenza pandemic.
‘What we’ve confirmed is that H5N1 viruses isolated from two patients in recent cases in Egypt both showed this so-called 294S change,’ Keiji Fukuda, coordinator for the WHO’s global influenza programme, told Reuters.
He said that there was ‘no clinical information’ upon which to base any change to the WHO’s recommendations on treatment.
‘But based on what we see from laboratory tests, we expect any reduction in sensitivity or increase in resistance is going to be on the moderate side,’ Fukuda said.
‘We’re not making any changes in recommendations for therapy because we don’t have strong evidence this means oseltamivir should not be used.’
The mutated strain was found in a 26-year-old Egyptian factory worker and his teenage niece in the Nile Delta province of Gharbia, both of whom died in December along with another female relative, according to Fukuda.
The uncle and niece were given Tamiflu in the second hospital in which they were treated, after the disease was already more developed, he said.
Laboratory tests on the two Egyptian’s samples showed the 294S mutation, known to have levels of resistance which make oseltamivir less efficient in such cases, Fukuda said.
More research was needed, but for now there are ‘no wholesale recommendations on changes in treatment using oseltamivir,’ according to Fukuda, a U.S. influenza expert.
Avian influenza story source: WHO