TUESDAY, Sept. 28 (HealthDay News) -- When taken shortly after
the onset of symptoms, the antiviral drug Tamiflu seems to have
protected otherwise healthy swine flu patients from contracting
pneumonia during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Chinese researchers
Tamiflu may also have shortened the period that patients were
contagious and reduced the duration of their fevers, the
research However, reporting in the Sept. 29 issue of bmj.com,
the study authors stressed that their findings should be
interpreted with caution given that the conclusions are based on
an after-the-fact analysis and on a pool of patients not
uniformly given chest X-rays at the time of illness. The study
team, led by Dr. Weizhong Yang and Dr. Hongjie Yu from the
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing,
note that in 2009 the fast-spreading influenza A (H1N1) virus
killed more than 18,000 people in over 200 countries. Prior
research has suggested that patients who take antiviral
medications within two days of experiencing season