MONDAY, Oct. 17 (HealthDay News) -- An oseltamivir-resistant H5N1 avian flu virus has been isolated from a Vietnamese girl, according to a report published in the Oct. 20 edition of Nature.
"Although our findings are based on a virus from only a single patient, they raise the possibility that it might be useful to stockpile zanamivir as well as oseltamivir in the event of an H5N1 influenza pandemic," the authors conclude.
Q. Mai Le, M.D., of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Hanoi, Vietnam, and colleagues studied a 14-year-old patient who received a prophylactic dose of oseltamivir (75 mg once a day) for four days followed by a therapeutic dose (75 mg twice daily) for seven days.
During the prophylactic treatment, the researchers isolated H5N1 virus which had a "histidine-to-tyrosine substitution at position 274 (represented as H274Y) in its neuraminidase protein, a mutation that confers resistance to oseltamivir," according to the report. No virus was isolated during the therapeutic treatment.
Because the patient recovered after receiving higher doses of oseltamivir, the researchers suggest that the currently recommended prophylactic treatment regimen may be suboptimal and could contribute to the emergence of resistant virus.
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