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Tamiflu saves lives of severely ill flu patients

in.reuters.com

Tamiflu saves lives of severely ill flu patients

Roche AG’s antiviral drug Tamiflu helped prevent deaths from seasonal flu in severely ill patients who had chronic underlying health problems, Chinese researchers said on Sunday.

A study of 760 older, severely ill patients in Hong Kong found that Roche and Gilead Sciences Inc’s drug Tamiflu cut the rate of death by 37 percent.

More than 60 percent of patients in the study had underlying chronic illnesses, and 78 percent had been hospitalized with complications from seasonal flu.

The study, done by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco, suggests the drug can help save the lives of seriously ill flu patients, Dr David Reddy, who leads Roche’s pandemic flu task force, said in a telephone briefing.

Known generically as oseltamivir, Tamiflu is one of two antiviral drugs that work well against H1N1 swine flu.

The study took place in two hospitals in Hong Kong between 2007 and 2008. About half the patients in the study got Tamiflu and half got no treatment. Death rates were about the same at both hospitals.

“In this study, Tamiflu improved the survival rate by reducing the rate of death by 37 percent in this high-risk group of patients with severe seasonal flu compared to no treatment,” Reddy said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that the very old and people with chronic medical conditions should be treated with antiviral drugs — either Tamiflu or GlaxoSmithKline and Biota’s Relenza — when they have flu-like symptoms.

Health officials caution against using either drug in otherwise healthy people who have moderate or mild flu symptoms, however, because of the fear of resistance. Influenza viruses very quickly change to put up a strong defense against antiviral drugs. Last year the seasonal H1N1 virus developed strong resistance to Tamiflu. Two older flu drugs, amantadine and rimantadine, now have very little effect against influenza viruses.

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A new generation

Campaigners want the legal limbo of young immigrants resolved 

They were brought to the US at a young age by the parents, first generation immigrants who often still have close ties to their home countries.

Younger brothers and sisters were born in America, second generation immigrants who enjoy the status of US citizens.

Not Generation 1.5. Despite having lived most of their lives in the US and speaking fluent English, many cannot legally work, vote or drive in most US states.

They are subject to arrest and deportation just like any other undocumented migrant.

“They fear being deported but many of them don’t know (anything) other than English, so they have no idea what awaits (them) in their countries of origin, said Ruben Rumbaut of the University of California in Irvine, who coined the Generation 1.5 term.

There are no official figures of how many undocumented children live in the US, but the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 7% of all Hispanic children are unauthorised immigrants.

This suggest there are 1.1 million Latino children who are not US citizens.

If you smoke, watch out for low back pain

If you smoke, watch out for low back pain

If you needed another reason to cut the cigarette habit: Smokers, especially younger smokers, are more likely to report low back pain than people who have never smoked, according to a new analysis.

After examining existing research, Finnish researchers concluded smoking is “modestly” associated with the risk of low back pain and the effects may be “at least partly reversible.” Their findings are published in the January issue of the American Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Rahman Shiri of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and colleagues wanted to know if smoking increases the risk of low back pain, a problem that affects an estimated 8 in 10 adults during some point in their lives.

Previous analysis of the existing research came to different conclusions, with one study suggesting an association between smoking and low back pain and the other reporting “unclear findings.”

The Finnish researchers identified and reviewed 81 studies from around the world involving smokers, former smokers, or never-smokers and low back pain conducted between 1966 and 2009. Of those, 40 studies involving more than 300,000 adults and adolescents met the standards for the analysis.

The Finnish team subjected the data of the individual studies to further statistical analysis to tease out the strength of relationships even as the studies reported various outcomes.

They determined that even though the data did not prove smoking leads to low back pain, the analysis of previous the literature suggested a “fairly modest” association between smoking and low back pain.

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