A top scientist warned on Thursday against misusing oseltamivir, the antiviral drug that governments are stockpiling to fight a possible human pandemic caused by the H5N1 bird flu, saying that could lead to resistance.
The warning from microbiologist Yi Guan, from the University of Hong Kong, comes after The Lancet medical journal published two research papers which showed that resistance to anti-flu drugs had risen by 12 percent world-wide in the past decade.
In some countries in Asia, such as China, drug resistance exceeded 70 percent, suggesting that drugs like amantadine and rimantadine will probably no longer be effective for treatment or as a preventive in a pandemic outbreak of flu. Guan described that as a tremendous blow because amantadine, a far cheaper drug than oseltamivir, helped control the H5N1 in Hong Kong where it made the first known jump to humans in 1997.
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