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Archive for the ‘H1N1 influenza infection’ Category

A novel variant of swine flu emerged in Asia with a genetic adaptation that offers some resistance to Roche’s Tami flu and GlaxoSmithKline’s Elena, the two main drugs used to fight the disease.

Investigators said that over 30% of the samples of H1N1 influenza infection from northern Australia, and over 10% of Singapore, collected during the first months of 2011 had yielded a slightly reduced sensitivity to both drugs.

Meanwhile, there was a significant reduction in sensitivity to peramivir, which is an experimental medication BioCryst Pharmaceuticals.

This new variant of flu was also detected in other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report of the Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza World Health Organization (WHO) in Melbourne, published in Euro surveillance magazine.

Although this genetic mutation has been observed before in a small number of cases of seasonal flu and H5N1 avian influenza, not previously registered in the swine flu H1N1.

H1N1 was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in March 2009 and expanded rapidly throughout the world. WHO believes that some 18,450 people died from the virus since its inception until August 2010, including many pregnant women and young people?

The WHO, which had declared the strain responsible for the first pandemic of the XXI century, determined the end of that cycle in August 2010, when the virus was incorporated into the so-called seasonal flu.

The seasonal influenza vaccine is currently offered throughout the world, manufactured by firms such as GlaxoSmithKline, Sarnoff and Novartis – includes protection against the H1N1 strain.