15:00, February 2nd 2009
This season it is recommended that doctors prescribe rimantidine along with Tamiflu because this year’s strain of flu is resistant to Tamiflu.
Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an advisory recommending for doctors, saying that doctors should treat patients with flu with a combination of Tamiflu and other drugs. More than half of the flu viruses that have been analyzed in the U.S. this season are of the H1N1 strain, which makes them Tamiflu-resistant. Last year only 11 percent of the most common flu strains were resistant to Tamiflu.
Given this situation, H1N1, the strain resistant to common anti-flu treatment could become the dominant strain this season. Influenza B and influenza A H3N1 can still be successfully treated with Tamiflu.
However, the treatment does not kill the virus, it shortens the period of time in which the flu develops.
Flu symptoms include fever, aching muscles, headache, a dry cough, sore throat and physical fatigue. Other symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, sore throat and nasal congestion. The flu remains infectious for around one week within human body temperature. A person can infect others from about one day before becoming sick to about five days after developing symptoms.
Flu complications include bronchitis and pneumonia. Influenza is caused by viruses which infect the nose, throat and lungs.
According to the CDC, flu season lasts from November to March and sometimes extends in the early spring. The flu season normally reaches its peak between January and March.
Influenza and its additional complications, such as pneumonia, cause 250,000 to 500,000 deaths annually, according to WHO.
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