A form of influenza that cannot be successfully treated with common medicines was identified in eight more people in Delaware, public health officials reported Tuesday.
Those new discoveries -- which included four new cases identified Tuesday afternoon -- bring the total number of antiviral-resistant flu cases during the 2010-2011 flu season in Delaware to 14. The state has never experienced that many cases of antiviral-resistant flu. But the latest figure should not be taken as a sign that the flu has become impervious to antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, said Dr. Karyl Rattay, director of Delaware's Division of Public Health.
"We don't have enough information to say that at this point," she said.
A 45-year-old Sussex County woman died Feb. 24 from an antiviral-resistant form of the flu, the only one of the 14 cases in which the victim died.
Rattay could not say whether the woman would have survived a less-resistant form of the virus.
"We have no way of knowing if she would have lived otherwise," she said. "That person had a number of chronic underlying conditions."
The high number can more likely be attributed to stepped-up surveillance efforts by the public health division. So far this season, the division has collected specimens from 569 people who were sickened with the flu to test for antiviral resistance. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which runs tests to determine whether those cases are resistant, requested that Delaware increase its surveillance in March.
Typically, the public health division sends about five samples every other week to the CDC as part of the federal agency's routine monitoring of antiviral-resistant flu cases. But the population makeup of the First State made it a good candidate for increased surveillance, said Jeff Diamond, CDC spokesman.
"They have all the ZIP code and demographic information that is helpful for a good study," he said. "... It gives us a snapshot of what's going on regarding whether there's a rise in the strain."
Tamiflu, the most commonly used antiviral, was effective against the flu in almost 99 percent of all tested cases during the flu season of 2009-2010. That was the season in which swine (or novel) H1N1 virus was rapidly spreading throughout the nation.
The forms of the flu that were resistant to Tamiflu shared a single genetic mutation that aided their resistance. All the cases in Delaware were resistant to Tamiflu.
Although Delaware has had 14 cases, there has not been a noticeable increase in reports of anti-viral resistant flu, Diamond said.
Contact Hiran Ratnayake at 324-2547 or
hratnayake@delawareonline.com.
http://www.sparkweekly.com/article/2011 ... -1/PRIVACY
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
