Story of Influenza Antivirals: Part 28

A shower of DVDs

Just to recap, after the summer break, there were three major reasons for conducting the Cochrane Antiviral review ignoring trial publications, in addition to questions of efficacy associated with the clinical use of NIs for influenza: 

1. Influenza antivirals were a commonly used and stockpiled drug against past and future pandemics on the basis of international and national recommendations. Recommendations were based on the claimed and assumed ability of the drug to reduce complications and transmission (HHS 2005; WHO 2007). In theory, containing the spread of influenza allowed time for an organised response with longer‐term interventions (such as vaccines), which take time to produce (WHO 2007). 

2. There were legitimate reasons to doubt these claims and the results of previous Cochrane reviews of NIs in adults (Jefferson 2006; Jefferson 2009a) and children (Shun‐Shin 2009), due to the risk of reporting bias, including the certainty of publication bias (Doshi 2012a; Doshi 2012b). 

3. Oseltamiv…