Phage treatment for bacterial infections featured in The New Yorker:
newyorker.com
When a Virus Is the Cure
As bacteria grow more resistant to antibiotics, bacteriophage therapy is making a comeback.
By Nicola Twilley
December 14, 2020
"Phages, or bacteriophages, are viruses that infect only bacteria. Each kingdom of life—plants, animals, bacteria, and so on—has its own distinct complement of viruses. Animal and plant viruses have always received most of our scientific attention, because they pose a direct threat to our health, and that of our livestock and crops. The well-being of bacteria has, understandably, been of less concern, yet the battle between viruses and bacteria is brutal: scientists estimate that phages cause a trillion trillion infections per second, destroying half the world’s bacteria every forty-eight hours. As we are now all too aware, animal-specific viruses can mutate enough to infect a different animal species. But they will not attack bacteria, and bacteriophage viruses are similarly harmless to animals, humans included. Phage therapy operates on the principle that the enemy of our enemy could be our friend. If Bunevacz’s doctors could find a virus that infected his particular strain of E. coli, it might succeed where antibiotics had failed." |
