Vogue: The FDA Approves a New Flu Drug—And It’s a Game Changer

After last year’s unprecedented flu season, which caused nearly 80,000 flu-related deaths in the U.S., this year is beginning with a bit of good news: There’s a new FDA-approved drug for treating the virus, the first in nearly two decades.

The new drug, which will be sold under the name Xofluza, works differently than the current go-to prescriptions, including Tamiflu. Xofluza requires only one dose—compared with Tamiflu’s two pills a day for five days—for people ages 12 and up to help reduce symptoms and shorten the illness, as long as it’s taken in the first two days of sickness. “I’m excited to see how effective it is,” says Dr. Robert Segal, a cardiologist and co-founder of Labfinder.com, an online platform that offers patients help with scheduling laboratory and radiology tests as well as unlimited access to their results. In addition to it being a single dose treatment, Xofluza is also “based on a novel mechanism against the flu, hopefully [allowing for] little to no drug resistance.” The new technique, which blocks the enzyme needed by the virus to replicate itself, has been shown to work against the many drug-resistant strains that have sprung up in recent years, such as the common A and B strains. “If it’s effective, it will be a game changer.”

Read the full article on Vogue.com.

LabFinder is a no-cost, online platform for people to easily schedule their medical tests and view results securely. The LabFinder team is passionate about improving the ‘patient and doctor experience’ through better communication, reduce out-of-pocket expenses and making everyone know more about their own medical tests. The mission of LabFinder is simple: we want to be solution to you and get you the test results you deserve so you can make right choices about your health.