Flu treatment

This article is about flu treatment in humans for mild human flu, which includes both efforts to reduce symptoms and treatments for the flu virus itself.

The CDC recommends that patients with flu get plenty of rest, drink a lot of liquids, and avoid using alcohol and tobacco.

Antiviral Drugs
These treatments are antiviral drugs that affect the virus itself and may be used as either a prophylactic (that is, before infection) or as treatment. In general, antiviral drugs for treatment of influenza must be taken within a few days of the onset of symptoms.

Due to increasing incidence of drug resistance to amantadine and rimantadine in H3N2 during the 2005-2006 flu season in the United States, the CDC recommended the use of oseltamivir for flu prevention and the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for flu treatment.

Approved
These prescription drugs have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective.

Experimental
Peramivir is being developed by BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, but has not yet been approved for sale in the United States.

Conventional symptomatic relief
Over the counter medicines may be taken to relieve influenza symptoms, but they do not affect the virus.

Children and teenagers with flu symptoms (particularly fever) should avoid taking aspirin as taking aspirin in the presence of influenza infection (especially Influenzavirus B) can lead to Reye's syndrome, a rare but potentially fatal disease of the liver.

Unconventional treatment
Homeopathic and other cold and flu remedies that fail to meet the regulatory requirements required to be marketed as drugs that treat disease, or the standards of evidence-based medicine, are heavily marketed and widely sold as nutritional supplements. They may be based on extracts of living things, but may lack documentation of their safety and effectiveness. They may be promoted by those who deny the need for such testing and may fail to provide a scientifically plausible rationale for their effectiveness.