Resistant strains of flu appearing

By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com

March 05, 2009 03:18 pm

— If you had a flu shot this season, it was supposed to protect you from the flu.
It might not have done so, and naturally, you’re looking for someone to blame.
Might as well blame the flu. It won’t do any good to point the finger at a nurse, doctor or pharmacist.
“We’re seeing a resurgence in flu,” Royce Cheney, Royce’s Pharmacy proprietor, said. “We’re seeing treatments for flu and bacterial infections at the same time. That may be a shotgun remedy.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that the most common strain of flu circulating in the United States now resists the main drug used to treat it, Roche AG’s Tamiflu.
Translation: If the flu shot you had last fall failed, your doctor didn’t have a weapon to fight your ailment.
Four patients infected with the resistant flu strain have died this year, including two children, CDC said. Known generically as oseltamivir, Tamiflu is one of the few antidotes for the virus influenza, which kills an estimated 36,000 people in the United States per year.
Last flu season, only 19 percent of H1N1 viruses tested were Tamiflu-resistant, CDC reported.
Diane Reynolds, registered nurse and branch manager for Guardian Health Care in Cleburne, reported seeing no escalation in flu cases.
“We vaccinate all our patients,” she said.
She added that pneumonia continues to affect the senior population.
“It’s a major problem for senior adults and results from their compromised immune systems,” Reynolds said. “It starts out as a cold. Then lung symptoms develop. The seniors may not have the immune systems to fight it off.”
Pneumonia, a bacterial infection, can be prevented.
“Nothing beats hand-washing,” Reynolds said. “It sounds simple, but if you go to the grocery store and handle a cart, you pick up germs.”
Once you’ve got pneumonia, the cure may carry a side effect as nauseating as the pneumonia, such as panic attacks.
“Levaquin is a once-a-day, short-term antibiotic for pneumonia,“ Reynolds said. “Side effects vary.”