Tamiflu: Millions wasted on flu drug, claims major report

Tesstacious wrote:Hundreds of millions of pounds may have been wasted on a drug for flu that works no better than paracetamol, a landmark analysis has said.  The UK has spent £473m on Tamiflu, which is stockpiled by governments globally to prepare for flu pandemics.

The Cochrane Collaboration claimed the drug did not prevent the spread of flu or reduce dangerous complications, and only slightly helped symptoms. It concluded that the drug reduced the persistence of flu symptoms from seven days to 6.3 days in adults and to 5.8 days in children. But the report's authors said drugs such as paracetamol could have a similar impact.

It also claimed that the drug had a number of side-effects, including nausea, headaches, psychiatric events, kidney problems and hyperglycaemia.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26954482

VOD(original) wrote:lol . what a joke what a waste

Flu experts agreed the drugs aren’t as effective as, say, an antibiotic would be against a bacterial infection such as strep. But they also strongly defend both drugs as important weapons against flu, which kills between 4,000 and 49,000 people a year in the U.S. alone.

“We need better antivirals, including combination antiviral treatments, but right now this is all we have got,” said Dr. Tim Uyeki of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s flu division.

“CDC recommends early antiviral treatment as soon as possible for any hospitalized patient with suspected or confirmed influenza,” he told NBC News. “The number of observational studies suggesting the benefit of early antiviral treatment in hospitalized patients keeps growing.”

The benefits of Tamiflu, given as a pill or in a syrup and Relenza, an inhaled powder, “greatly outweigh” any side-effects, Uyeki said.

Other experts said questioning the benefits of the drugs could cost some people their lives. “We now know that antivirals saved lives during the (2009 H1N1 swine flu) pandemic and we risk losing one of the few weapons we have because of overly negative publicity,” said Peter Openshaw, Director of the Center for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College London.

Sassy wrote:All paracetamol will do is bring your temperature down, tamiflu is an anti viral, antibiotics don't work against viruses.   Four years ago I got a bug (virus) that hospitalised me, had four infusions of antibiotics before they realised it was a virus.   An antivirus saved my life, paracetamol would not have done. (especially as I'm allergic to it lol)   And just listening on the news, this result was based on the study, since then in real cases they have shown it most definitely does make a difference.