What to do with flu? You could drink some chicken soup, even if there's no proof it will make you better, it will make you feel better. Did you know social contact can keep you healthy? Yes, there's bed rest, and over-the-counter analgesics (but no aspirin for feverish youngsters -- it can cause a sometimes fatal brain disorder called Reye syndrome). Come to think of it, depending on your sense of humor, even Letterman might help you get over the flu.
I thought this was supposed to be a science magazine. Has science come up with anything more impressive than soup and television? They're working on it. Let's look inside the doctor's toolbag of tomorrow.
Gobblin' those pills
Instead of getting a flu vaccine shot every year, how about a shot that could prevent flu, or neutralize it early on? A couple of existing prescription drugs, amantadine and rimantadine, can protect 70 to 90 percent of people from type A influenza if taken within 48 hours of onset. (Type A accounts for about 70 percent of flu cases).
Although you're better off getting a flu shot, these drugs are good for people who cannot take flu shots due to an allergy to eggs, for example.
Two versions of a new drug now approaching the market interfere with an enzyme that helps the flu virus enter the respiratory tract. Since the active site of this enzyme seems fairly constant in various viral strains, these drugs could be extremely handy if a dangerous new virus broke out. (See "Drug Could Provide Alternative..." "Getting Ready," and "Researchers Seek New Weapons" in the bibliography).
Another promising alternative is a new form of vaccine. Conventional vaccines arouse the body's defenses by profiling surface proteins of the virus to the immune system. The new approach also immunizes the body against the surface proteins, but the proteins are not injected -- they are produced in a person after the injection of a small amount of the virus' genetic material. (After a few months, this genetic material naturally degrades -- you wouldn't carry it forever).
These so-called "DNA vaccines" have already passed animal tests and some human trials, says virologist Virginia Hinshaw, who studies them, but they're not on the market.
She points to some advantages of a DNA vaccine. "It focuses the immune system on the entity that's most important for protection, the H and N, and it calls in both T-cells and antibodies, the two branches of the immune system." She adds that DNA vaccines might be produced more quickly than conventional vaccines, which would help in an emergency.
The snort that soothes
Let's say you don't like flu. Let's say you don't like flu shots, either. Then you'll be glad to 
hear about a nasal spritzer developed in Israel by Hebrew University virologist Zichria Zakay-Rones. She inactivated the flu strains recommended for the upcoming flu season and pumped them up the snouts of 51 medical students. While these doctors-to-be ministered to ill patients, they got an intense exposure to the flu, but none showed symptoms (see "Nasal Immunization..." in the bibliography).
A second nasal vaccine, from the California pharmaceutical company Aviron, protected 99 percent of children in a large clinical trial in July. It could reach the market in a year or two.
Aside from the obvious advantage (Look mom, no needles!) inhaled vaccines produce two kinds of immune response. Standard vaccines boost the "humoral" response -- the immune components carried in blood. But inhaled vaccine also increase defenses in mucus of the respiratory tract, where flu virus first attacks the body.
That's the future. But you've mentioned that flu season is just around the corner.
Should you get the shot?
