Antibiotic Replacement?

Since bacteria are ever changing and evolving, many have become resistant to the antibiotics that were originally developed to treat the infections that they cause. With more and more bacteria developing resistance faster than new antibiotics can be developed, previously treatable infections may become more serious. Bacteriophages and phage therapy may provide a solution to antibiotic resistant antibiotics.

Bacteriophages are viruses that invade bacterial cells and disrupt bacterial metabolism and cause the bacterium to lyse. Phage Therapy uses lytic bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Bacteriophages do not generally cover as wide a range of bacteria as antibiotics. Most phages are specific for one species of bacteria and many are only able to lyse specific strains within a species. Because phages can be so specific, phage therapy results in less harm to the normal body flora than commonly used antibiotics, which often disrupt the normal gastrointestinal flora and result in opportunistic secondary infections by organisms such as Clostridium difficile. 

Bacteria also develop resistance to phages, but it is much easier to develop new phages than new antibiotics. A new phage may be obtained for a new strain of resistant bacteria in a few weeks compared to a few years for the development of a new antibiotic. As bacteria evolve and become resistant, the corresponding phages naturally evolve alongside. Phages have special advantage for localized use because they penetrate deeper as long as the infection is present, rather than decrease rapidly in concentration below the surface like antibiotics. The phages stop reproducing once the specific bacteria they target is destroyed and do not develop secondary resistance. With the increasing incidence of antibiotic resistant bacteria and a deficit in the development of new classes of antibiotics to counteract them, there is a need to apply phages in a range of infections.

Here is a case study describing an effective phage treatment