Washington: Physicians may soon have a new weapon to fight the influenza virus as American researchers have discovered a flu drug that can alleviate single dose of safe and effective influenza symptoms.
An analysis of the clinical trial show that a single injected dose of peramivir neuraminidase inhibitor (NAI) is safe and effective in the relief of flu symptoms including fever virus excretion, when administered within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, the researchers said.
"Based on clinical data, peramivir is the first neuraminidase inhibitor (NAI), which has proven to be safe and effective as a single dose therapy for patients with acute flu without complications," said Rich Whitley, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
According to a retrospective pooled analysis of two trials, a single dose of peramivir administered intramuscularly (IM), flu symptoms, including fever alleviated, significantly faster than the placebo arms of the studies, "said Whitley .
In two placebo-controlled studies involving a combined total of 427 adults, a single dose of peramivir administered as an injection within 48 hours of the onset of flu symptoms.
Study participants recorded their temperature and severity of seven symptoms of influenza using a four-point scale for 14 days.
Peramivir was found to be generally safe and well tolerated and effectively reduced the duration of symptoms in patients treated with peramivir.
Compared with patients receiving placebo, peramivir reduced the median time to alleviation of symptoms for 22 hours, time to resolution of fever for 24 hours and the amount of nasal viral shedding during the first two days followingtreatment.
Influenza is an important public health problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Disease, is responsible for more than 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths annually in the United States, the researchers said.
The vaccines can be effective in preventing the flu, but the changing viral strains do vaccine formulation challenging, and is difficult to ensure properly inoculate large populations, they said.
