A New Way To Treat H1N1 At UNC Hospitals

[I am not sure if this person is the 4th case or not.]
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Excerpt:

Both clusters, detected in Wales, UK and North Carolina, USA, occurred in a single ward in a hospital, and both involved patients whose immune systems were severely compromised or suppressed. Transmission of resistant virus from one patient to another is suspected in both outbreaks.

In the USA outbreak, which involved four severely immunocompromised patients, cases occurred in a two-week period between mid-October and early November. Three of the four cases were fatal, but the role of H1N1 infection in contributing to these deaths is uncertain.
http://pandemicinformationnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/who-oseltamivir-resistance-in.html

12/06/09 02:45PM

Dr. Charles van der Horst, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at UNC, says Lillian Chason, the UNC student in critical condition with swine flu, has been receiving a new form of treatment. Relenza, or properly known as Zanamivir, is usually inhaled for treating and preventing influenza. Dr. van der Horst and colleague Christopher Hurt, from UNC’s Center for Infectious Diseases, are each leading the first studies of medications for IV treatment of influenza.

Dr. van der Horst says Chason’s case is a good example for why IV treatment for the flu, whether seasonal or H1N1, is over due. The UNC freshman is on a ventilator and cannot be orally administered Tamiflu and can’t inhale the aerosolized Relenza.

To receive the treatment intravenously, a patient has to be hospitalized with the flu for at least five days. Dr. van der Horst’s study is open to pregnant women and patients on ventilators, like Chason.

Novel H1N1 hasn’t shown the resistance to Relenza as it has with Tamiflu. Last month, three people infected with a mutation of H1N1 that is resistant to Tamiflu died at Duke University Hospital.