Hospital chief says poor treatment upped cases

The president of one of Beijing's top hospitals has said that improper medical treatment has caused a severe increase of A/H1N1 cases.

An overuse of hormone therapies to treat A/H1N1 has weakened patients' immune systems, making them more susceptible to the illness, Li Ning, president of Beijing You'an Hospital, said at an H1N1 flu control and prevention meeting.

As one of Beijing's leading infectious disease centers, You'an Hospital has been responsible for the treatment of critically ill swine flu patients. It has diagnosed more than 400 infected with the virus, 80 of who were diagnosed with severe cases.

There have been 15 deaths from A/H1N1 at You'an.

"All the cases that have been transferred [to You'an] from other hospitals received hormone therapy doses ranging from 320 mg to 800 mg," Li said. "A patient from Daxing Hospital was even given 1,500 mg."

A 1,000 mg dose of hormones can cause an adult to lose immune system activity for 72 hours, Li said.

Li did not specify the exact nature of the hormone therapies.

Some patients from other hospitals were not immediately administered Oseltamivir, an antiviral drug sold under the name Tamiflu, when they came for treatment, he said.

"Oseltamivir should be used for A/H1N1 patients within 48 hours," Li said. "The severe patients who came to our hospital were given the drug three to four days after they started running fever."

Li said his team is still researching whether delayed use of Tamiflu worsens the effect of the virus.

"A/H1N1 was not as normal as we expected," Li said, noting the virus was also traced in urine. "Actually it is more dangerous than SARS."

A deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrom, or SARS, sickened more than 8,000 people, killing nearly 800, in China in 2003.

H1N1 flu has also been found in patients' excrement, said Cao Wuchun, a microbiological expert.

"It means the virus can no longer be classified just as a respiratory illness," he said.

Yet Pang Xinghuo, director of Beijing's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said overall H1N1 flu prevention efforts have been successful.

More than 100,000 people in China have been infected with H1N1 flu, Xinhua News Agency reported. In comparison, the United States has had more than 22 million cases since the virus was first identified in April.

Pang declined to comment on whether improper treatment led to an increase in cases.

Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co Ltd is producing a new rapid test to detect swine flu, which could help medical experts diagnose and treat the virus more effectively.

The test is expected to be available for commercial use early next year.

It already has been tried on 10,000 people nationwide with an overall response rate above 80 percent, said Qiu Zixin, Wantai general manager.

The cost for the test per person will be about 200 yuan ($30). Other tests used to identify H1N1 flu are 1,000 yuan.

"If the new rapid test can be available in hospitals and Beijing's CDC, it will help us to provide better medical treatment to patients," said Peng Bibo, an expert from the Armed Police General Hospital.

As of Dec. 20, 10,448 Beijing residents have been inoculated for A/H1N1, according to statistics from the Beijing CDC.