Recoveries From Staphylococcic Meningitis Following Bacteriophage Therapy

Abstract

Before undertaking a more detailed consideration of our patients who suffered from staphylococcic infection of the meninges, we have presented a review of staphylococcic meningitis 1 as reported in the literature. We were able to find records of 48 acceptable examples of recovery from this disease, a number sufficiently small to indicate the malignant nature of this localization of staphylococcic infection. We plan to discuss now the patients with staphylococcic meningitis for whom we have been privileged to furnish bacteriophage service, including in this discussion not only those who had a recognized invasion of the blood stream, so as to belong in our series of 500 patients with staphylococcemia,2 but also patients suffering from meningitis without adequate evidence of staphylococcemia and hence omitted from the series with sepsis. The patients included in this series with staphylococcemia will be designated by their appropriate serial numbers. In the present paper we purpose to present the records of 10 patients who recovered from meningitis and of 1 additional patient who apparently recovered from meningitis and was discharged from the hospital but succumbed later to an abscess of the brain. The case histories of some of these patients have already been recorded in the literature, and some of them will be found not wholly acceptable as examples of diffuse inflammation of the leptomeninges. Each of them, however, may teach a lesson in regard to the difficult problem of staphylococcic meningitis.

Clinical Indications and Compassionate Use of Phage Therapy: Personal Experience and Literature Review with a Focus on Osteoarticular Infections

“…Inherently, phages are able to treat any clinical presentation of bacterial infections. Reports have been published using phage therapy for a large array of clinical indications, including gastro-intestinal [2,11,52,53,54], localized [3,37,55,56,57,58,59], burn wound [9,60], systemic [21,39,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72], urogenital [10,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82], respiratory [44,45,47,82,83,84,85], oto-rhino-laryngeal (ORL) [12,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95], and osteoarticular infections (see section below). These clinical indications include infections that are acute or chronic, sensitive or resistant to antibiotics, and are caused by highly variable common or opportunistic pathogens.…”

Staphylococcal Spinal Meningitis

“…Anthony (1892) reported the first " cryptogenic staphylococcal meningitis" in a robust soldier aged 23. Neal (1924) and MacNeal et al (1943) collected small series of cases, and Teng and Meleney (1950), in an exhaustive review of the literature, recorded 88 cases with recovery.…”

Benefits of Combined Phage–Antibiotic Therapy for the Control of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria: A Literature Review

“…All 23 rabbits that did not receive treatment died; all 5 rabbits that received a late combination of sulphathiazole and phages died; 1 rabbit survived out of the 6 that received early sulphathiazole treatment; and 13 rabbits survived out of the 22 that received an early combination of sulphathiazole and phages [ 11 ]. In the 1943 study by MacNeal et al, the joint administration of phages and sulphonamides also proved effective in humans, as 24 out of 55 patients treated for acute malignant staphylococcal infections were cured [ 12 , 13 ].…”