Word: influenzae
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...thing is certain about avian influenza: it's deadly. All three people who contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus in China last year died. In the first six weeks of 2009, eight people have come down with bird flu, and five have died. Another thing is that while the disease has yet to go pandemic, as many doctors fear it could, it remains worrisomely persistent. Every year since 2003, about 100 people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa contract the disease. Last year, in a rare exception, the number dropped below...
...even more difficult if you do catch the bug. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in the fall that the most common strain of flu now making the rounds in the U.S. is resistant to oseltamivir, or Tamiflu, the most popular antimicrobial used to treat influenza. But that doesn't mean a pandemic is necessarily on the way. Here...
Health officials have been tracking the strain in question since the last flu season, when the CDC reported that 11% of flu cases were resistant to Tamiflu. According to Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of the epidemiology and prevention branch of the CDC's influenza division, experts believe the resistant strain is the result of a spontaneous mutation in the influenza virus genome and not the result of overuse of antimicrobial agents like Tamiflu to treat the infection. That's based on the fact that during the last flu season, the resistant strain was widespread in countries with low Tamiflu...
...circulating Tamiflu-resistant strain. However, that drug, which is an inhaled powder, is not recommended for children under 7, for whom a combination of Tamiflu and an older drug, rimantadine, can be used to control the infection. Since every flu infection is made up of three different types of influenza virus, both Relenza and rimantadine still work to disarm the two types that are not resistant to Tamiflu...
...unlikely that the two flu strains are related other than that both are the result of mutations in the influenza virus genome...