Anti mutant flu drug found
Friday February 26th, 2010
Scientists may have found a powerful new anti-flu drug, it was announced last night.
The drug is known to work against bird flu, not the swine flu that alarmed the world last year.
It was the emergence of new strains of bird flu in Asian countries that first alerted the world to the risk of a flu pandemic.
The bird
flu virus, H5N1, proved deadly to humans who contracted it from birds
- but also proved not to be infectious.
Scientists in Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and the USA have worked together on the latest research.
Reporting in the journal PLoS Pathogens, they say the drug CS-8958 has proved much more powerful than the standard flu treatment, oseltamivir - or Tamiflu, in tests on laboratory mice.
A single dose of the new drug gave better survival and lower levels of virus in the animals than a five day course of oseltamivir.
The new drug also worked against Tamiflu-resistant strains of the virus, they report.
The next stage of the research is to see if the drug has similar benefits for humans.
The researchers write: "CS-8958 is highly effective for the treatment and prophylaxis of infection with H5N1 influenza viruses, including oseltamivir-resistant mutants."
Tags: Asia | Flu & Viruses | North America | Respiratory
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