The United States Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the CDC have recently published updated guidelines for the treatment of patients with confirmed or suspected influenza virus infections caused by either pandemic H1N1 or seasonal strains [41••, 70••] . According to these recommendations, those individuals with severe disease (requiring hospitalization or with evidence of lower respiratory tract infection) or those at high risk for complications (Table 1) should receive antiviral therapy even after 48 h of symptom onset. Adults with mild illness without high risk conditions who are younger than 65 years of age do not require treatment. If such individuals present within the first 48 h of illness, antiviral treatment can be considered in order to reduce the duration of illness. In all cases, decisions to administer antiviral medications for influenza treatment should be based on clinical and epidemiologic grounds, and never be delayed because of confirmatory laboratory tests [41••] . The usual dosing of oseltamivir for the treatment of influenza is 75 mg orally twice daily and of zanamivir is 10 mg (2 inhalations) twice daily. The recommended duration for antiviral treatment is 5 days, although longer treatment courses for patients who fail to improve after 5 days of treatment can be considered [70••] . Also, doubling the dose of oseltamivir to 150 mg orally twice daily has been suggested to be beneficial for some severely ill patients with H5N1 avian influenza [24, 67] . The FDA licensed oseltamivir for use in children 1 year of age and older in a liquid formulation at a dosage of 2 mg/kg/dose twice daily for 5 days. Zanamivir is not approved for use in children under 5. Oseltamivir and zanamivir are Pregnancy Category C drugs, but since influenza causes more severe disease and an increased rate of mortality among pregnant women, they should receive antiviral therapy with oseltamivir when indicated, since the potential benefit outweighs the theoretical risk to the fetus (Table 1) .