A recent government study showed that the influenza A viruses that resist the antiviral drug Tamiflu are mutating and spreading rapidly in the United States. 

 

Compared to last year’s flu season when 12 percent of the influenza A (H1N1) strain proved to be resistant to Tamiflu, this year the number grew to the staggering percentage of 98.5. Last year was the first time influenza viruses were reported anywhere in the world. 

 

Tamiflu is probably the most important antiviral drug that fights influenza A, an illness that kills about 36,000 people each year, according to data provided by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The fact that the influenza A (H1N1) strain has mutated in order to resist Tamiflu worries the community of infectious disease experts. 

 

Another fact that almost stunned experts is that the H1N1, the only virus showing resistance to Tamiflu, circulating this flu season seems to mutate to spread naturally and not as a response to antiviral use. 

 

"It makes me nervous. We know that it keeps mutating and that is why it is still around. It manages to figure out ways to outsmart us and our medications," Michael Koller, a doctor of internal medicine at Loyola University Medical Center, said according to the Chicagotribune.com.

 

So is there an alternative to Tamiflu?

 

Doctors have turned to Zanamir to fight the Influenza A H1N1. But this drug has some issues as well because it is inhaled and thus not recommended to some segments of the population which needed the most to fight influenza: very young children and people with respiratory problems. Physicians are advised by the Centers of Disease and Control to give those patients a mix of Tamiflu and Rimantanide.