Working with scientists from Exponential Biotherapies in Port Washington, New York, they have successfully used bacteriophage therapy to treat mice experimentally infected with a fatal vancomycin-resistant infection.

They report their results in the January 2002 issue of the journal Infection and Immunity.

Bacteriophage are viruses that can attack and kill bacteria, but they don't cause disease in humans. Researchers began exploring the potential of these viruses as antibacterial therapies in the early 20th century, but a combination of factors, not the least of which was the discovery of penicillin and the age of antibiotics, made that interest short-lived.

The rise of antibiotic resistance in the 1980s and 1990s has renewed scientific interest in the development of these alternative therapies.

In this study, the researchers experimentally infected mice with a strain of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and injected them with bacteriophage at varying times after initial infection.

Those mice that did not receive treatment died within 48 hours. All the mice that were treated within 5 hours of infection and half of those treated 24 hours after infection survived.

"The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains requires the exploration of alterative antibacterial therapies," say the researchers.

"In the present study we report the isolation of bacteriophage that are safe and effective as bactericidal agents for animals with lethal VRE infections. The results warrant a reexamination of the potential application of bacteriophages in Western medicine."

(Reference: B. Biswas, S. Adhya, P. Washart, B. Paul, A.N. Trstel, B. Powell, R. Carlton and C.R. Merril. 2002. Bacteriophage therapy reduces mice bacteremic from a clinical isolate of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium. Infection and Immunity, 70: 204-210.)

28-Jan-2002