A Brief History
On May 8, 2019, a British teenager became the first patient to receive bacteriophage therapy to treat an antibiotic resistant infection. The use of bacteriophages, which are viruses that attack bacteria cells, to treat bacterial infections was an idea that went back many decades but was superseded by the widespread use of antibiotic drugs.
Digging Deeper
Those same antibiotics, while highly successful, have caused mutations in bacteria that make those pathogens resistant to the antibiotics and difficult to treat with normal methods. The use of genetically altered bacteriophages results in fewer side effects and less chance of the bacteria developing resistance.
A limitation of bacteriophage treatment is the highly specific nature of the viruses to exactly what bacteria they can attack, requiring exact targeting of a particular infection by a particular bacteriophage. While less prone to resistance developing, the possibility of bacteria becoming resistant to bacteriophage treatment is an ever-present risk.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Kuchment, Anna. The Forgotten Cure: The Past and Future of Phage Therapy. Springer, 2014.
Richardson, Emma. Bacteriophages: Biology, Technology and Therapy. States Academic Press, 2023.
The featured image in this article, a model by Kevin M. Gill of a bacteriophage, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.