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Flu Kill Pill Wipes off Viruses Within 24 Hours

Japanese pharmaceutical company, Shionogi & Co., has now claimed that its experimental drug can rid flu suffers of their symptoms in as little as a day, but the sad part is the drug will be no good to this year’s epidemic because it won’t be available to the United States until 2019.

Baloxavir, the flu drug discovered by Osaka, Japan-based Shionogi, received preliminary approval in Japan last week. Japanese and American flu patients who took part in the recent clinical trial of the Shionogi & Co. pill are said to have had the virus wiped out from their bodies in about 24 hours through a single dose.

Flu Kill Pill Wipes off Viruses in 24 Hours

The experimental drug worked three times faster than another antiviral drug, Tamiflu, the company told the The Wall Street Journal. Tamiflu, which generated more than $3 billion in sales when swine flu sparked a global contagion in 2009, reduces the duration of illness by only up to a day if it’s taken within the first 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. What’s more, some seasonal strains have developed mutations that decrease its potency, spurring calls for alternatives.

While the overall time to alleviation of symptoms was similar

whether participants took baloxavir marboxil or oseltamivir(sold under the brand name Tamiflu), Shionogi says its experimental drug provides immediate relief faster, which might curb the virus’s contagiousness in people who take the treatment.

Flu Kill Pill Wipes off Viruses in 24 Hours

The advantage is that it’s one pill once, versus a course of therapy, so particularly for pandemic planning, this could be an advantage,” the head of co-developer Roche’s pharma unit, Daniel O’Day, told Bloomberg.

“You don’t have the potential resistance that comes with not completing your course of therapy.”

According to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, the drug, which targets both the A and B types of influenza virus, received a green light from a Japanese government health ministry panel in early February, indicating a likely go-ahead for imminent manufacture and sale of the drug.

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