Via The Australian: Swine flu victim's muscles 'melted'. Excerpt:
Australian medical experts have warned doctors worldwide to be on the alert for a rare but alarming complication of swine flu after a teenage boy suffered "muscle melting" so severe his urine turned almost black.
The unnamed 16-year-old suffered fever and other flu symptoms for three days before his urine went dark and intense pain meant he could no longer stand or move his arms and legs.
He was admitted to Melbourne's Monash Medical Centre, where tests showed he was suffering a condition called rhabdomyolysis -- a condition caused when muscles are damaged and dissolve, flooding the bloodstream with their by-products.
Shortly after admission one blood test for creatine kinase -- an enzyme produced when muscles break down -- returned a reading of 164,149 international units per litre (IU/L), more than 700 times above a normal reading of less than 230 IU/L.
He was given antiviral drugs, morphine and large amounts of fluids, but his creatine kinase levels continued to soar and after four days in hospital peaked at 1,127,000 IU/L, before gradually declining.
He recovered and was discharged after eight days, and a follow-up two weeks later showed no lasting muscle weakness or significant other ill-effects.
The incident happened at the height of the swine flu outbreak in June, but has just been revealed in a paper published by five of the hospital's doctors in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
