Why an exotic fruit is the world's only weapon against bird flu

[emad]

Why an exotic fruit is the world's only weapon against bird flu
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 15 October 2005


A rare herb grown in China used to flavour duck dishes and treat infants for colic is at the centre of a worldwide search for a cure for avian flu.

Star anise, the unusual fruit of a small oriental tree, is sold in supermarkets in the UK to consumers seeking its pungent, liquorice-like flavour.

But the herb has a vital function as the source of shikimic acid from which the drug Tamiflu is made, the only defence the world currently has against the threatened flu pandemic.

Tamiflu cannot prevent infection with avian flu but it can reduce its severity. In the absence of an effective vaccine - which has not yet been developed - it is all that stands between the world and what could become a modern plague.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article319716.ece

[Missy M]

1. Watch the shortage of Star Anise come about and the price...

shoot sky high.

[notadmblnd]

3. currently it's runs about 3 dollars a pound

http://www.bulkfoods.com/search_results.asp?txtsearchParamCat=37&txtsearchParamType=ALL&txtsearchParamMan=ALL&txtsearchParamVen=ALL&txtFromSearch=fromSearch&txtsearchParamTxt=4209

[Coloradan4Truth]

6. Do you know if this anise

also produces shikimic acid like Star Anise does?

[notadmblnd]

11. yes, it's star anise

check out the website. They also sell it in bulk seed.

It's also contained in chinese five spice you can buy right off the shelf. If you want the entire star you can get it here.

http://www.worldpantry.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/ProductDisplay?prmenbr=72040&prrfnbr=75166&hbtype=ppc&hbv1=google&hbv2=star%20anise

[kestrel91316]

2. Why do people keep repeating the tired, false meme that there is

NO vaccine against Avian Flu? A vaccine against the strain that jumped person-to-person is in the testing stage now.

Take all the star anise you want, but get the vaccine when it's offered, too. It's your civic duty to help prevent propagation of the virus through the population.

[mestup]

4. Civic Duty aside, Tamiflu hasn't even been tested yet on avian-human trans

While vaccine discovery and development is underway, governments are stockpiling existing antiviral drugs. Roche Pharma donated 3 million treatments (30 million doses) of antiviral Tamiflu (oseltamivir) to WHO to help contain a bird flu outbreak. Although not tested on an avian-human virus, Tamiflu is expected to be effective in slowing H5N1 infections because it blocks the action of the neuraminidase enzyme on the surface of the virus, preventing it from spreading to other cells.

Prompted by WHO, some 30 countries have already placed orders worth upward of $3 billion with Roche to stockpile Tamiflu. The United States alone wants to stockpile 20 million doses. As a result, Roche is experiencing production bottlenecks and plans to increase capacity, including opening a production facility in North America next year. But customers may have to wait a year or more for delivery.

Because of these difficulties, a group of scientists is urging countries to stockpile another antiviral drug, zanamivir, marketed by GSK as Relenza. Roche's production problems and Relenza's fewer side effects make stockpiling that drug attractive.

http://www.dddmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=016&ACCT=1600000100&ISSUE=0510&RELTYPE=PNP&PRODCODE=00000000&PRODLETT=P

[hobbit709]

5. Every Time I've gotten a flu shot

it worked-I got the flu. The only times in the last 30 years that I've had the flu was the 3 times the doctor talked me into getting the shot.

[Patchuli]

9. I don't trust flu shots either

Remember two years ago when they were threatening (scaring us again) with that bad flu and of course, * was not prepared to deal with it and we were short of the vaccine? I was talked into getting a shot, but when I got to my doc's office, they told me they were so short of it that they couldn't give it to me unless I were elderly or very ill, neither of which I was. I was kind of pissed that they made an appt. for me to have it and then turned me away when I got there.

My friend did get the flu shot and ended up in the hospital with a terrible reaction to it.

I don't get the shots and I rarely get the flu. I hope that this trend continues!

[kestrel91316]

14. The flu shot is not 100% effective, and no one has ever claimed

it is. Some people will not mount an adequate immune response. If you are incubating the flu and get the shot, it's too late for it to prevent anything. And feeling crappy after a vaccination is often mistaken for the flu: that just means it's doing it's job of stimulating the immune response.

[hobbit709]

16. Five days of

102°+ fever, aches and pains, and upset stomach is not just feeling crappy. The doctor wanted me to get the shots because I'm "high risk"-i.e. diabetic. since then I don't get shots and I don't get sick.
The doctor is always astounded at my immune system response-he doesn't think it should work as well as it does.

[MuseRider]

7. A little skitish about that

having lived through Swine Flu vaccines and taken care of a lot of Gillian Barre patients.

[mike_c]

8. kestrel-- the vaccine under development isn't likely to work...

...against a pandemic strain. In fact, it's almost guaranteed to NOT work. Yes, it's being developed from human isolates, but that flu is still the non-pandemic avian variety, which has always had some limited ability to infect humans from birds, and even more infrequently, to infect humans from other human hosts. But it doesn't do so easily, and that's the rub. A pandemic stain with easy human transmissibility will have recombined with another Type A influenza (or much less likely, mutated along similar trajectories) and will have substantial antigenic differences from the strain currently under study as a seed virus. The current work is meant to serve two different purposes than production of a pandemic virus vaccine-- first, to produce a vaccine against the current H5N1 strain that does occasionally infect humans-- after all, it has a hideously high mortality rate-- but that vaccine would be of little use outside of specialized circumstances. Second, it's being done to test the targeted gene knockouts that will allow virus propagation in chicken embryos to determine whether that technique will still produce antigenically active vaccine for humans.

I'm afraid that meme isn't tired-- it will simply not be possible to begin production of a vaccine against the pandemic strain until at least several months after the emergence and isolation of that specific recombinant strain.

[kestrel91316]

15. The current vaccine will have to suffice until the real deal happens.

I think any pandemic would last a couple of years and so we would still have time (6 months) to develop the pandemic strain into vaccine. I am hoping that the current vaccine in development will be "close enough" to help out, but I acknowledge it's an imperfect solution. Nothing else to do. Be glad they are doing this much.

1918, folks didn't even have that.

[tridim]

10. My favorite source of star anise..

Vietnamese Pho..


I just figured out what I'm having for lunch.

[mike_c]

12. can I join you for lunch...?

Yum.

[NNadir]

13. There are 12 synthetic steps from (-)-shikimic acid to Oseltamivir.

Oseltamivir is the generic name of tamiflu.

J. Org. Chem. 2001, 66, 2044-2051

(An improved process can be found in Org. Proc. Res. Dev., 8 (1), 86 -91, 2004.)

The effectiveness of shikimic acid as an anti-flu agent is likely to be pretty low, I think. This is a case of confusing the starting material with the final product.

Shikimic acid isn't all that exotic. It is biological a precursor to many of the polyphenols found in wood.