Swine Flu - Swine Flu Symptoms - What Is Swine Flu - Swine Flu Treatment

NF Reporter · 04-27-2009, 11:27 AM

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If you have flu symptoms, stay home, and when you cough or sneeze, cover your mouth and nose with a tissue. Afterward, throw the tissue in the trash and wash your hands. That will help prevent your flu from spreading. If you've got flu symptoms, and you've recently been to a high-risk area like ...
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Swine Flu - Swine Flu Symptoms - What Is Swine Flu - Swine Flu Treatment

waltky · 04-28-2009, 12:51 AM

Kids playin' with the piggies started it all...

4-year-old boy at Mexican pig farm may provide clues on swine flu
April 27, 2009, -- With the death toll climbing, Mexican authorities at the center of a global flu epidemic struggled Monday to piece together its lethal march as attention focused on a 4-year-old boy and a pig farm.

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The boy, who survived, has emerged as the earliest known victim in Mexico of the never-before-seen virus, Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said Monday. The boy's case provides an important clue of the strain's path. The boy lived near a pig farm run by a U.S.-Mexican company, Granjas Carroll, in the municipality of Perote, in Veracruz state on the Gulf of Mexico coast. He contracted the disease April 2, Cordova said, and was part of a group of residents who came down with what at the time was labeled a particularly bad case of the flu.

Only one sample from the group, that belonging to the boy, was preserved and re-tested -- only after other cases of the new strain were later confirmed elsewhere, Cordova said. The boy had the same disease. It is unknown how many more of the hundreds of people who fell sick around April 2 in Perote also were infected by the more virulent strain. In another ominous disclosure, officials said the first confirmed fatality of the disease, from an impoverished state neighboring Veracruz, worked as a door-to-door census-taker and might have had contact with scores of people.

Residents in the Perote hamlet known as La Gloria, since mid-March, have complained that contamination from the pig farm was tainting their water and giving them respiratory infections. In one demonstration in early April, they carried signs with pictures of pigs crossed out with an X and the word: Peligro -- Danger. Residents told reporters at the time that more than half of the town's 3,000 inhabitants were sick and that three children under 2 years old had died.

More 4-year-old boy at Mexican pig farm may provide clues on swine flu | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

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Glaxo, Novavax, other drug stocks leap due to swine flu
27 Apr.`09 - As concern spread Monday about a swine flu virus outbreak, investors saw opportunity in shares of companies that make or hope to make anti-flu drugs.

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Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, which makes antiviral Relenza, saw its U.S.-traded shares rise 7.6% Monday, while U.S.-traded shares of Swiss drugmaker Roche Holdings, which makes antiviral Tamiflu, rose 4%. The antivirals, which make up the U.S. government's stock of anti-flu drugs, reduce the severity of flu symptoms and may prevent illness. They're seen as the first line of defense in an outbreak.

Longer term, health officials look for new vaccines to ward off outbreaks. Novavax, a Maryland-based company that in 2005 turned its attention to flu vaccines, saw its shares leap 80% Monday. Novavax is testing cell-based technologies to enable it to produce a flu vaccine in as little as three months, says equity analyst Elemer Piros at Rodman & Renshaw. That's half as long as traditional flu vaccine makers, which use an egg-based process. Shortening the process is key, because flu can mutate rapidly.

GSK and Roche also say they're prepared to expand antiviral production. The swine flu outbreak will reinvigorate stockpiling, says Jason Kantor, biotech analyst for RBC Capital Markets. He covers Gilead Sciences, which developed Tamiflu and gets royalties from Roche. The outbreak "raises the awareness that these threats still do exist," he says.

Glaxo, Novavax, other drug stocks leap due to swine flu - USATODAY.com