Scientists Warn Of Resistance To Roche Flu Drug

Resistance to a popular anti-influenza drug from Switzerland's Roche ROG.VX may be more common than previously thought, raising questions about how it should be used in a major pandemic, Japanese researchers said on Thursday. Tamiflu, or oseltamivir, belongs to a class of drugs known as a neuraminidase inhibitors which work by blocking the action of viral enzymes. But Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, who analysed samples from a group of 50 Japanese children given the drug, found that flu viruses had mutated to outwit the medicine in 18 percent of the patients. Writing in The Lancet medical journal, they said that resistant strains of viruses were first detected 4 days after the start of treatment and on each successive day of the study.

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