Flu river
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| Tamiflu, the primary flu-fighting do drugs, is acquiring into come up waters where ducks and opposite water birds whitethorn pick it up. If the birds are carrying flu viruses, which many normally do, those viruses may develop a resistance to the dose, scientists straightaway worry. |
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What if the solution to one problem causes other problems down the road? That may be the cause in the ongoing struggle to fight the flu. Flu flavor is almost here, which means more and more multitude may make up taking Tamiflu in the months ahead. Tamiflu is a popular opposing-grippe drug that treats both seasonal flu strains and the new H1N1 flu, an episodic disease better known As swine flu.
But this increased use of Tamiflu may make up introducing new problems. A squad of Asian country scientists recently affected tierce rivers in Japan and found them to be contaminated with Tamiflu's active ingredient, oseltamivir carboxylate or OC. They found the aforementioned pollution in the water discharged from localised sewage plants, water supply that ends up in those rivers. People excreted the drug in their urine, and urine discharged from the sewage plants carried IT to the rivers.
Sewage treatment plants are designed to remove germs and solids from the wastes dispensed past household toilets, only many drugs can finish up. OC is one of those escaping drugs.
OC in the water whitethorn be a serious problem for birds — and for people. Hither's why: The flu, momentaneous for flu, is caused by a virus, a midget organism that invades living cells and turns them against the consistence. There is not one flu-causing virus; there are many. These many viruses are constantly evolving, or changing in regulate to survive. They find unused ways to infect people and animals, and all twelvemonth freshly kinds of flu show upwards. Birds are natural carriers of umpteen flu-causing viruses.
If a razzing drinks water impure with OC, that bird may be able to fight disconnected the types of grippe that Tamiflu treats. As a result, new flus — flus that can't be cured by Tamiflu — may start to develop in the bird. Erstwhile a drug-resistant flu grows in the bird, that bird stool pass it on to other animals. This New, stronger flu could eventually start infecting mass. And that could mean big trouble, since Tamiflu would not helper multitude fight this stronger flu..
The Japanese study was led by Gopal Ghosh of Kyoto University. Ghosh and his team up amassed water from two places: sewage treatment plants and the rivers that carried away the treated wastewater dispensed by the plants. They first collected samples in Dec of utmost year, when the flu flavor was start. They collected more water samples in February, when the grippe was bad, and accumulated a third hardening of samples afterward.
The scientists found OC in the sewage samples all metre. They found a higher concentration in the second set down of samples, from February. That's when the flu was at its whip, and 1,738 cases were recorded in Kyoto. At the same time, in the second base set of samples taken in February, the scientists found OC in the river water as well. The OC did not show up in the river in the first and third set of samples.
Scientists have known for geezerhood that sewage treatment plants do not remove OC from the water. Jerker Fick, an environmental apothecary at Umeå University in Sweden, published a study two years ago that showed that most water treatment plants removed "zero percent" — or no — of the OC. In fact, Fick says, almost all the Tamiflu ingested by a human being will end up in the environment as OC.
And when the OC comes out of the sewage treatment plants, the birds will be ready. Ducks, for example, dear to swim in the warm waters just downstream of those plants during the coldest months — during flu season. "I saw it myself," Fick says.
POWER WORDS (from the Yahoo! Kids Dictionary)
flu or influenza An acute, contagious, viral infection characterized by inflammation of the respiratory parcel and by pyrexia, chills, contractor pain and prostration.
compactness The come of a specified nub in a unit come of other substance. The Ghosh canvass determined how many nanograms (one billionth of a gram) of OC was in a liter of the water they sampled.
virus Any of respective simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals and bacteria that often get disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded aside a protein coat.
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