flu

Assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine; Medical director of the Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center; investigator in the adult H1N1 influenza clinical trials.
With the arrival of fall, and schools and colleges well under way, Georgia already has seen a substantial number of cases of novel H1N1 flu. Although it appears that most cases have been mild, there have been more serious cases, just as there are every year with seasonal flu.

Few doctors even test patients for flu, and Tamiflu is not widely prescribed. But the news is sobering because the pill, known generically as oseltamivir, is one of the few weapons against influenza, which kills an estimated 36,000 people in the United States in an average year. It is also considered a key weapon against a potential pandemic of a new type of influenza, and this study suggests the virus can rapidly evade its effects. This season, nine children have died from influenza, most apparently healthy before they got infected, the CDC reports.

A diet lacking in the mineral selenium may allow viruses to mutate and become more virulent, scientific research suggests. A human flu virus used to infect mice given a selenium free diet was found to have undergone genetic changes.