Influenza

Government health officials said Tuesday that they were "looking intently" at developing a swine flu vaccine. "It will be a matter of deciding not to make a vaccine rather than deciding to move forward," said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But undertaking work on a vaccine would be challenging. In a typical year, formulating the nation's flu vaccine is a tricky proposition. This is not a typical year.

An outbreak of swine flu that may have killed as many as 60 people prompted authorities in Mexico City to close schools Friday throughout the sprawling city of 20 million and order emergency health measures in an attempt to contain the disease. In the United States, officials said they had found one new case in San Diego, bringing the number of U.S. cases to eight. All have recovered fully.

When Nick Rous feels a cold coming on, he starts taking vitamin C and lots of garlic. When people around him come down with the flu, he reaches for echinacea and a homeopathic remedy, Oscillococcinum. As a last resort, Rous, 30, says he turns to Tylenol and the nasal spray Afrin. "But I try to avoid that stuff as much as possible," says the saxophone player, who lives in San Francisco.

A federal panel recommended Wednesday that all children over the age of 6 months should be vaccinated for influenza every year. The recommendation, which is expected to be adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would call for an estimated 30 million more children to be vaccinated -- although current vaccination rates suggest that less than a quarter of them, about 7 million, would actually receive the shots.

Roche Holding and GlaxoSmithKline said Tuesday that they had added new labels to their prescription flu medicines that contain reports of abnormal psychiatric behavior in some patients. A warning about cases of delirium and unusual behavior had been listed previously on Roche's drug, Tamiflu. That language was strengthened to say some cases were fatal.

The government approved a new genetic test for the flu virus Tuesday that will allow labs across the country to identify flu strains within four hours instead of four days. The time-saving test could be crucial if a deadly new strain emerges, federal health officials said. The new test also could help doctors make better treatment decisions during a conventional flu season. The test was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Applied Biosystems Inc. of Foster City, Calif.

Scientists who tested monkeys with the resurrected 1918 killer flu virus have a better idea of how the deadliest epidemic in history attacked and killed so many people -- by over-amping the victims' immune systems. The findings help explain why so many of the roughly 50 million who died in the Spanish flu pandemic were young and healthy, Wisconsin researchers reported Friday in the journal Science.

Rapid flu tests can help doctors decide when patients need antibiotics and when they do not, researchers have reported. Experts almost universally agree that antibiotics are overused in the U.S. and elsewhere and that this overuse has helped new, drug-resistant strains of bacteria to evolve. Antibiotics are useless against viruses, such as influenza, but bacterial and viral infection often cause very similar symptoms. The new findings, published in the Jan.

In the midst of a now-two-week spell of subzero temperatures, Minnesotans bundled up to take their families out for flu shots after three children in the state died from the virus in the last dozen days. The deaths led state public health officials to urge everyone to get vaccinated against the influenza virus. All three children who died, two 8-year-olds and a 17-month-old, had the influenza A strain covered by this year's flu shot.