Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
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Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
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Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#2I got the flu this year and looked into it. I'm not sure the CDC's suggestions are well founded. On average, antivirals shorten symptoms by half a day over seven days. Not a huge upside. And the Cochrane Collaboration and the BMJ found that it's unlikely the antivirals reduce hospital admissions or complications[1].
On the flip side, there are a number of side effects, including headaches, nausea, and vomiting, which can't make the flu experience better.
I was at the edge of the 48-hour window, and decided it just wasn't worth it for me. Maybe if someone I knew who was elderly or had a compromised immune system got the flu, I would push them to get the antivirals, but for otherwise healthy adults, it seems like a waste of money.
[1]http://www.cochrane.org/features/tamiflu-relenza-how-effecti...?
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#3Tamiflu is $130? I was prescribed Tamiflu last year and a course cost me 1/3rd of that at the first drug store I walked into. I'm in Australia.
Can't say if it really worked or not.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#4>The CDC released figures Thursday showing that this season’s influenza vaccine is only about 23 percent effective
Yikes, is it normally that low? I looked up a quick figure for 2013, and it was 60% effectiveness.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#5>The CDC released figures Thursday showing that this season’s influenza vaccine is only about 23 percent effective Yikes, is it normally that low? I looked up a quick figure for 2013, and it was 60% effectiveness.
I believe last year's was unusually effective, and this year's was unusually ineffective
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#6Isn't this the same old story, as written about by Ben Goldacre for instance, over and over again?
Pharma sees money (everyone gets the flu), tries to come up with something, sort of fails, yet still wants money and somehow manages to push through via official channels and gets a new drug of which the effects are rather questionable into the stores, earns money.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#7I trust the FDA and Cochrane Review here more than the CDC.
The small durational effect, high dependence on early-administration, and reliance on observational reports combine to add to my suspicion. Consider especially:
If patients are motivated to seek anything that might help, and they know that a prescription is only given in "first 48 hours", they might report their symptoms as having started later than they really did. Then, when their symptoms end at the usual time, it "observationally" looks like a shorter flu. Or maybe, other placebo/choice-supportive-bias effects cause them to rush to deem their symptoms 'over' – after all they went through the time and cost of acquiring the drug.
Thus a pronouncement like "works if rapidly administered" could become a self-fulfilling prophesy through social/psychological biases in reporting.
Similarly, the CDC is under political/social pressure to "do something", and have active modern recommendations, other than just generic 100-year-old patience/hygiene tips. This is especially the case when, as this year, their flu-strain guesses for the vaccine have been wrong.
Temperamentally and institutionally, the CDC needs to believe there's something else to do, that the stockpiles of antivirals they've bought at great cost are effective, and that these kinds of drugs (from specific companies they often rely upon) will help if something much worse than seasonal flu materializes. So they're going to err in the direction of faith-in-antivirals.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#8Becase to be efective you take the damm thing before flu season starts in spetember - once you have it its not worth it.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#9Isn't this the same old story, as written about by Ben Goldacre for instance, over and over again? Pharma sees money ( everyone gets the flu), tries to come up with something, sort of fails, yet still wants money and somehow manages to push through via official channels and gets a new drug of which the effects are rather questionable into the stores, earns money.
no this is selfish peopel who didnt get the jab in time wanting somthing after the fact.
Re: Why the CDC and FDA Are Telling You Two Different Things About Flu Drugs
#10The BMJ have run a campaign to make more clinical trial data about Tamiflu public, along with questioning its effectiveness given the large sum of public money spent on it. It seems to me that their reporting is the main reason this story has seen the light of day.
There are lots of BMJ articles about it here: http://www.bmj.com/tamiflu