It's flu season, and of all the different strains out there H1N1 - of Swine Flu - is the most dominant and contagious.
Dave Engelthaler is the director of TGen, the Translational Genomics Lab in Flagstaff. He describes H1N1 as, "part swine, part human flu, part avian flu. It's kind of a Frankenstein virus." Engelthaler says H1N1 is particularly dangerous because it's known to be resistant to commonly prescribed antiviral drugs. But, now TGen - in collaboration with Northern Arizona University - has received a patent to design a test that identifies H1N1.
"Right now, there's no tools to look for that," Engelthaler says. "There's no way for a doctor to diagnose whether or not it's resistant to a particular antiviral drug. They just kind of go based off of what everyone else is saying and no one is testing for it." He adds, "What we wanted to do is develop a test that puts more information into the hands of a physician to make better decisions about their patients."
Flu pandemics of the past - including the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009 - have killed millions of people worldwide. Although the new strain typing test won't keep people from getting the flu, Engelthaler believes it could help more people recover from it. "When you have a strain that comes out of nature, whether it comes from pigs or from birds, there's a possibility it could be very dangerous to humans," he says. "And that was the concern; are we going to see another 1918 where we saw tens of millions of Americans dying?"
The test isn't available yet, but TGen is seeking approval from the Federal Drug Administration in hopes that doctors everywhere will soon be able to use it.
