Tag Archives: centers for disease control and prevention

New survey suggests Americans keen for H1N1 vaccine

in.reuters.com

New survey suggests Americans keen for H1N1 vaccine

Days before the swine flu vaccine becomes available, more than half of U.S. adults say they will get the vaccine for themselves and 75 percent will get it for their children, according to a survey released on Friday.

Forty percent said they would not get the H1N1 vaccine, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health found.

“These findings suggest that public health officials need to be prepared for a surge in demand for the H1N1 vaccine if the H1N1 flu becomes more severe,” said Harvard’s Robert Blendon, who led the study.

The survey conflicts with one published earlier this week by Consumer Reports showing only 35 percent of Americans would definitely have their children vaccinated.

The Harvard researchers polled 1,042 U.S. adults for what they said was a representative sample of national opinion late last month.

The poll results suggest more people would get a swine flu vaccine than usually get vaccinated against seasonal influenza in the United States, where flu kills an estimated 36,000 mostly elderly people a year.

H1N1 swine flu was declared a pandemic in June and it has circulated globally ever since.

Companies have been rushing to make and distribute vaccines for H1N1 and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the first 600,000 doses will arrive in cities, states and counties that ordered them next week.

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Swine flu could overload U.S. hospitals: report

in.reuters.com

Swine flu could overload U.S. hospitals: report

Fifteen states could run out of hospital beds and 12 more could fill 75 percent of their beds with swine flu sufferers if 35 percent of Americans catch the virus in coming weeks, a report released Thursday said.

The study, based on estimates from a computer model developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows the strain hospitals and health departments could face as a second wave of swine flu surges.

“Our point in doing this is not to cry Chicken Little but really to point out the potential even a mild pandemic can have and how readily that can overwhelm the healthcare delivery system,” Jeffrey Levi, director of Trust for America’s Health, which sponsored the report, said in a telephone briefing.

According to the report, the number of people hospitalized could range from 168,025 in California to 2,485 in Wyoming, and many states may face shortages of beds.

Some may need to cut back on hospitalizations for elective procedures.

“States around the country will also have to figure out how to manage the influx of people in doctors’ offices and ambulatory care settings, in addition to the surge in hospitalizations,” Levi said.

He said state and local health departments are scrambling to set up distribution systems for the H1N1 vaccine as it becomes available this month, but challenges remained.

“These systems are untested, and glitches are sure to arise along the way,” Levi said.

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New flu drug may resist mutations: researchers

japan-swine-flu

New flu drug may resist mutations: researchers

A new type of experimental flu drug that stops the virus from infecting cells appears to stop it from mutating into drug-resistant forms, researchers reported on Sunday.

Tests in mice and in lab dishes show that NexBio Inc.’s drug Fludase can stop the seasonal influenza virus from infecting cells and can fight strains of virus that have evolved resistance to Tamiflu, Roche AG’s popular influenza drug, the company said.

“Extensive, prolonged nonclinical influenza studies have not shown the development of any meaningful resistance,” the company said in a statement released at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco.

Privately held NexBio Inc. said tests showed that Fludase, also known as DAS181, worked against the new H1N1 swine flu virus too.

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.

Tamiflu and a similar drug, GlaxoSmithKline’s Relenza, affect a compound in the flu virus called neuraminadase — which gives flu viruses like H1N1 the “N” in their names.

Fludase affects the human cells that influenza infects, not the virus itself and that should make it less likely to cause the virus to develop resistance, company spokesman Dr. David Wurtman said.

It affects the sialic acid receptor — the molecular doorway that flu viruses use to attach to cells, he said.

“It makes it impossible to spread, so it can’t infect neighboring cells,” Wurtman said in a telephone interview.

Teams at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, University of Hong Kong and Saint Louis University in Missouri ran the experiments, the company said.

“Based on these encouraging data, we are moving forward with our ongoing clinical development of DAS181, and we will continue to work closely with FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration), CDC and NIH (the National Institutes of Health) on this clinical program during the current pandemic,” Dr. Ronald Moss of NexBio, who presented the study, said in a statement.

Health experts predict that new drugs to fight flu will soon be needed, as the virus is mutation prone. Many are in development — furthest along is BioCryst’s peramivir, which would be made and sold in partnership with Japan’s Shionogi.

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