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The problem of antibiotic resistance is increasing. Superbugs like MRSA (methicillin-resistant staph aureus) are becoming harder and harder to treat as they evolve resistance to the most powerful antibiotics used against them.
Back before the development of antibiotics, scientists were working on a different way to fight bacterial infections. They enlisted viruses that attack only those particular bacteria. Should we go back to this old bacteriophage technology for the future of fighting infection?
Guests: David Weber, MD, MPH, professor of medicine, pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He’s also associate chief of staff and medical director of infection control at UNC Health Care.
Elizabeth Kutter, PhD, Professor of Biophysics at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She heads the Laboratory of Phage Biology there.
Randall Wolcott, MD, CWS, director of the Southwest Regional Wound Care Center in Lubbock, Texas; director of the Medical Biofilm Research Institute in Lubbock, Texas.
I am listening to this program and the fascinating work that is being done in the development of drugs and phages for infection control. An infection involves both exposure to the infectious agent AND patient susceptibility to it. None of your guests have said anything about treating the susceptibility of the patient. In my veterinary practice I use very few antibiotics. Instead, I focus on the patient's susceptibility so that their own immune/healing powers can overcome the infection. It would be great if you could get a guest on your show who could address that aspect of infection.
Love your show, keep it up!
Does any one treat tooth root infections w/phages in Fla? I'm going to lose an 850.00 root canal because they cant clear up a small infection. I may try acupuncture too. Any one had a similar thing?
I am a 75 year old man
I contacted MRSA in a hospital was treated with antibiotics. Months later I started running a high fever(104.5) was taken to a critical care unit in the hospital given more antibiotics and told that MRSA was now in my blood stream.
It was nip and tuck for five and a half weeks receiving the most powerful antibiotic they had that was a last ditch effort to knock out the infection
I was very lucky to survive.
I was told that 80% of people who had the infection in their blood died. Why is this bacteriophage not made available to those as a last ditch effort if they sign waivers knowing it is not approved by FDA? Is it better to let people die than at least giving them the option to survive, no matter the risk?
Phage therapy sounds great. But 1) won't the pharmaceutical companies making antibiotics lobby against it? And 2) won't bacteria evolve restistance to phages (or even the cell-exploding drug derived from them that Dr Wolcott mentioned) just as they have to antibiotics if we overuse them?
Great show. I hope Dr Weber's message about overuse gets through.