Flu remedies for the birds

None of the alternative medicines sold on the internet as treatments for bird flu have proven benefits and some will increase the likelihood of the disease proving fatal, a leading expert warned this week.

From oregano oil to shitake mushroom extracts, dozens of products are being touted on commercial websites as preventing infection or combatting the effects of avian flu in the event of a human pandemic.

But Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Britain's Exeter University, said a study of the treatments such as bee pollen or high doses of vitamin D showed that none was backed by clinical research.

The academic, Britain's only professor of alternative therapies, said some of the products would make the H5N1 virus more dangerous by boosting the body's immune system.

Bird flu can kill humans by attacking the respiratory tract and tricking the body into pushing the immune system into overdrive, creating a "storm" of antibodies that cause blood to flood the lungs and suffocate the victim.

Professor Ernst, speaking at the Science Media Centre in London, said: "Hundreds of treatments have been promoted - we searched Google and found 3.3 million sites offering advice or products linking alternative medicine with bird flu.

"We looked at the evidence for and against these treatments and we found that virtually none is backed by good evidence. There is nothing under the umbrella of complementary medicine that works against bird flu.

"Indeed, some could be dangerous by encouraging the very response that bird flu uses to attack the human body."

The therapies, ranging from well-known products such as echinacea and green tea to more obscure extracts such as wolfberry fruit and algae, risk giving the public a false sense of safety, Professor Ernst says.

He warned that some patients could believe they were treating themselves effectively for an outbreak of avian flu with products that at best had no proven benefits.

But another scientist warned that the lack of clinical research into the effects of herbal and alternative remedies was also hampering the search for drugs that could combat bird flu and other diseases.

Dr Ron Cutler, a microbiologist at the University of East London, said that there were components of natural foodstuffs - such as allicin in garlic, reservatol in red wine and chemicals in green tea - which had been identified as potentially potent anti-viral agents but no trials were being conducted to develop them as medicines.

He said the result was an over-reliance on Tamiflu and Relenza - the two pharmaceutical treatments that will be used as the frontline weapons against a human form of bird flu.

Dr Cutler said: "One of the problems is that herbal companies are generally quite small and cannot afford clinical trials. Taking a drug to market costs hundreds of millions of pounds and that is simply beyond their means.

"On the other hand, a drug company will not look at these compounds because they will not be able to patent them and thus recoup the costs of drug development. There needs to be an arrangement to investigate these substances further."

- INDEPENDENT