The development of antibiotic-resistant in bacteria has enhanced the scope of developing alternative approaches to conventional drugs. Bacteriophage therapy is one such approach that can be used as an alternative to antibiotics. The significance of live phages in counteracting lethal infectious and life threatening diseases caused by Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria has been reported. Bacteriophage therapy is a significant alternative to antibiotics in the current era of multidrug resistant bacterial infections as phages are used topically, orally or systemically in studies reviewed. The success rates found in these studies were 80-95% with few gastrointestinal or allergic side effects. British studies also verified significant effectiveness of phages against Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter spp., Pseudomonas spp and Staphylococcus aureus. US studies dealt with improving the bioavailability of phage. Problems faced in these studies have also been discussed. Conclusively, phage therapy may prove as an important alternative to antibiotics for combating multidrug resistant pathogens. The development of severe infectious diseases resistant to antibiotics has been an issue of serious concern and this in turn has led to the discovery of alternative approaches that could replace these conventional antibiotics. Steady decline in the discovery of new class of antibiotics, has enhanced the scope of bacteriophage as an alternative to conventional antimicrobial drugs. Therefore, bacteriophage can be employed as therapeutic agent to combat infections caused by multi-drug resistance bacteria [14,15]. Keywords Clinical Studies of Phages in Human PatientsIn human, a number of infectious diseases such as septicemia, wound infections, skin infection, osteomyelitis, urinary tract infections and middle ear infections were effectively treated with phage therapy [16]. In the US, phages were commonly used for preparation of human and animal vaccine. In phage therapy, phages were used in the form of liquid suspension, tablets, creams rinses, aerosols [17,18]. Phages therapy trials have been carried out in some countries and it is discussed below. Slopek et al. [19] reported cases of the treatment of staphylococcal infected patients of which 151 cases were of mixed infection including Staphylococcus. Positive results were obtained in 75% of infected ulcerated varicose vein cases and 100% in gastrointestinal infection, pericarditis and furunculosis due to Staphylococcus. Response rates were lower for patients more than 60 years of age and in patients with mixed infections. Interestingly, parallel administration of antibiotics diminished the effectiveness of phage therapy from 95.2% to 84.9%. Polish StudiesWeber et al. [20] evaluated the extent to which orally administered anti staphylococcal and anti-pseudomonal phage were penetrated into the serum or urine of 56 patients with suppurative bacterial infection. By the tenth day of treatment, it was established that 84% serum samples and 35% urine samples contained phage ind...
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