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What are the Complications and Treatments for the Bird Flu?
Home » Diseases » Bird Flu » What are the Complications and Treatments for the Bird Flu?If you are one of those unfortunate people who came into contact with an infected bird and have developed symptoms of the virus, there may be many complications that accompany the virus. Depending on the type of strain, you could end up dying from it. But this is an extreme case. So far only the people who have literally been around or touched such a bird died from the virus. So far the areas where this type of contamination has occurred were in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
If you get the virus, you may experience shortness of breath because the lungs become filled with fluid. But the worse case scenario, since the bird flu virus hasn't been known to attack humans on a consistent basis yet, is that virus could mutate and take on a more human type strain. If this were to occur, this could make the virus highly contagious and, with no possible vaccine available to stop it, lethal. Thank goodness this has not happened. The only cases that did occur were limited to one particular area and haven't gone beyond this. But there is still concern. And health officials are monitoring this very carefully just in case.
As for treatment, right now the French vaccine is not available yet and supposedly won't be ready till late 2006. So the best source of treatment is the flu drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu). This is a neuraminidase inhibitor that prevents the virus from escaping its host cell. At least it is hopeful this will help contain the virus until the French vaccine is ready.
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- What are the Complications and Treatments for the Bird Flu?