Iowa checking on flu drug stockpile as expiration dates near

State health officials are seeking guidance on what will happen with Iowa's stockpile of flu medication as it reaches its expiration date.

Some of the antiviral drugs the state has on hand for use in an influenza pandemic will expire within 18 months, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said Wednesday during an Iowa Board of Health meeting in Coralville.

More of the drugs, such as TamiFlu and Relenza, which are used to combat or prevent the flu, will expire by 2014, she said.

“This is an issue that all the states are facing,” Miller-Meeks said, at the University of Iowa Bioventures Center. “We're trying to be proactive.”

The department is checking with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on whether or not the medication can be released for use or if the expiration dates can be extended.

After evaluating the drugs' safety and effectiveness, the CDC approved extending the expiration dates on a small number of the medication courses, Miller-Meeks said.

“The worst-case scenario is that they would all have to be destroyed,” she said. “Whether it's state or federal or both, it's still taxpayer money.”

The drugs differ from flu vaccine, which is manufactured annually, based on flu strains in circulation.

Iowa's antiviral stockpile predates the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

In 2006, the state purchased $4.5 million in antiviral medications, enough to treat nearly 309,000 Iowans. Combined with a federal allotment of 438,000 courses of antivirals, Iowa had enough medicine to cover about 25 percent of the state's population, or 747,000 people.

Miller-Meeks did not know how much was used during the H1N1 pandemic, which occurred before she was named director.

One concern with widespread use is antiviral resistance – when a virus mutates enough that the medication is less effective at treating or preventing illness.