How to heal an infection that defies antibiotics? Another infection. Doctors in Eastern Europe have used lab-grown viruses to safely cure millions of wounds. So why can't we do the same here?
Posted 03.31.2009 at 7:11 am
38 Comments
Phage Replication: Once inside the wound, viruses hijack cells and produce enzymes that poke holes in the cell wall Medi-mation
But there's a big sticking point. The very characteristic that makes phages so effective-—that expert ability to shape-shift—-makes it difficult for them to pass muster with U.S. regulatory authorities. Although there have been no reports of adverse effects resulting from mutations, phages that don't normally nest inside the human body could potentially swap genes with other phages that do and produce foreign proteins that trigger an immune reaction. And it's impossible to say exactly how a virus might mutate when exposed to different bacteria, says Paul Sullam, a microbiologist at the University of California at San Francisco.
For that reason, among others, says FDA spokesperson Karen Riley, phage therapy used to treat or cure humans must be regulated as a biological product. That means that if the viruses show serious signs of mutating or changing during clinical trials, even if those changes pose no risk to patients, the trials could be scrapped. Which explains why Big Pharma isn't eager to conduct them. "I understand where the FDA is coming from, because each phage poses a certain risk," Sullam says. "When viruses have the ability to exchange genetic material, it makes people nervous on a visceral level."
Last Hope: Wolcott has secured federal clearance to administer phages to patients whose wounds defy conventional antibiotics John B. Carnett
To the FDA, the serum Randy Wolcott drizzled on his patient's leg is new and unproven. But to the scientists working at the George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology in the republic of Georgia, the medicine is as trusted as aspirin. Since 1923, when the facility was founded, scientists there have successfully treated millions of patients with phage therapy and presented more than 100 research abstracts at international conferences attesting to its clinical value.
Wolcott calls Eliava the "mother ship of phage research," a worldwide Mecca for people suffering from antibiotic-resistant infections. Only it doesn't look like the sort of place you'd want to go with a health problem. When Wolcott visited to hunt down alternatives for his patients, the four-story facility bore a closer resemblance to a neglected sanatorium. The walls were unpainted, the rooms were dark, and the equipment looked like museum pieces. "The conditions were abysmal," he says. "Yet the science is amazing."
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Here is an interesting company that works with Phage as well. www.Phagebiotech.com
Excellent article! There are, however, moral and ethical reasons for making phage therapy available in countries that are members of The World Medical Association which states: "In the treatment of a patient, where proven prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods do not exist or have been ineffective, the physician, with informed consent from the patient, must be free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, if in the physician's judgement it offers hope of saving life." A recent paper in English from Poland entitled: "Phage therapy of staphylococcal infections (including MRSA) may be less expensive than antibiotics (2007)" could serve as a model for the introduction of phage therapy in North America since our laws appear similar to those described for Poland.
A discussion of phage therapy is currently very timely, not only because too many patients are dying of superbug infections; but also because of the recent release of the Canadian film: Killer Cure: The Amazing Adventures of Bacteriophage and the June 2006 release of the book by Thomas Haeusler entitled, Viruses vs. Superbugs, a solution to the antibiotics crisis?
Listeria causes an estimated 2,500 cases of mainly food borne infections in the USA annually and as many as 500 deaths; however, the idea that ready-to-eat meat can be treated, if contaminated with Listeria bacteria, while a doctor could not get a pharmaceutical grade phage therapy product when faced with a patient suffering listeriosis strikes this author as absurd. Superbugs should be of interest to everybody because sooner or later everybody will be faced with an infection or know someone who will be suffering or dying with one. Withholding such treatment from patients when antibiotics are failing ought to be a crime!
I feel more comfortable with the idea of a natural cure that mutates to stay effective than a man-made extract which kills ALL bacteria. We have a lot of GOOD bacteria in our bodies. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
I would focus more on studying if phages could ever be dangerous. If they aren't dangerous, then tell the FDA to stop wasting their time trying to stop them.
So what if it becomes a boutique treatment?
Quite frankly looking at the pictures, Brillon need to lose weight and eat more heathily.
This will do more long term good than any phage treatment.
I don't think the patient pictured is Brillon. His wound was stated as being on his thigh. Just my two cents.
Here is something to think about:
There are roughly 500 deaths each year in North America (USA & Canada) due to foodborne listeriosis. If by approving and using the listeria phages we could prevent 50% of those deaths we could save 250 people. If, on the other hand, we could cure 10% of superbug infection deaths in North America by using phage therapy, that would amount to about 10,000!!!
Here is something to think about:
There are roughly 500 deaths each year in North America due to foodborne listeriosis. If by approving and using the listeria phages we could prevent 50% of those deaths we could save 250 people. If, on the other hand, we could cure 10% of superbug infection deaths in North America by using phage therapy that would amount to about 10,000!!!
It is interesting that at least three religions have passages that can reasonably be explained scientifically as eluding to a recognition of phage therapy. Islam has 'The Hadith of the Fly' and Christianity has 2 Kings 5:14 and, of course, Hinduism has the story of the healing powers of the river, Gagna, which has been shown to teem with bacteriophages active against Vibrio cholerae. It is therefore not surprising that the scientific literature generally starts with the report by Ernest Hankin, a British bacteriologist, who reported in 1896 on the presence of marked antibacterial activity (against Vibrio cholerae) which he observed in the waters of the Ganges and Jumna rivers in India, and he suggested that an unidentified substance (which passed through fine porcelain filters and was heat labile) was responsible for this phenomenon and for limiting the spread of cholera epidemics.
While googling to verify the religious passages, I discovered that a recent play by Gautam Raja, 'The Invisible River' now explores the religious and scientific issues behind bacteriophage therapy and that this play was staged in England, at the Nehru Centre in London on July 16 and at Lillian Baylis Theatre in Sadler's Well on July 18 - this according to an article in The Hindu, June 22, 2008 entitled 'Invisible River' set to enthral U.K. audience'.
Phage therapy is an interesting case study where religion, science, the arts, journalists and in some places medicine, share the same place, while political, bureaucratic, Western medical and religious leaders, who should and could be promoting the reintroduction of phage therapy to medicine seem to be out to lunch between body counting! Perahps if religious institutions showed the film "Killer Cure: The Amazing Adventures of Bacteriophage" and pushed Thomas Haeusler's 2006 book entitled, 'Viruses vs. Superbugs, a solution to the antibiotics crisis?', phage therapy might save many lives even in North America.
What should you do when you read articles about phage therapy? I usually make sure that the politicians that represent me at all levels get a copy of the paper. While I do not expect my political representatives to wake up to the fact that they could be the next superbug victim, they will not be able to say that they did not know when we finally will have data on the effectiveness of phage therapy and it will be possible to retrospectively calculate how many patients have died or been mutilated unnecessarily as a result of withholding phage therapy when antibiotics fail to cure superbug infections.
You can bet that the FDA will use every devious trick in the book to delay an effective, and especially cheap cure for diseases the big pharmaceutical companies deem only "treatable," that is, continuously holding your life hostage to extort their huge profits. There are lots of natural cures for cancer out there, but the medical industry has a legal (FDA) license to extort an average of $350,000 from a cancer patient for the privilege of dying a slow, painful death. Why do I think this virus cure is going to die a silenced death in the USA?
This is a great story that simultaneously left me very angry and sad and really illustrated what is so wrong about big government. The FDA would rather condemn that over 100000 Americas to death and cause hundreds of thousands of needless amputations to protect there precious little fiefdom, than give large and growing patient base suffering antibiotic resistant infections a very viable option the works very well in a third world county of Georgia? WTH!!!!!!!. This story real high lights the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the fda(big out of control government which obama wants to grow god help us), most physicians, and drug companies not willing to implement viable solution (agree not perfect) that could prevent thousands of needless deaths and amputations. Shouldn't the fda put patient well being ahead of there precious fiefdom? The moral and ethical bankruptcy of the fda is so profound they serious need to be disband and replaced with a smaller less bloated agency with allow treatments that work be fast track, Oh wait I guess since these poor souls arent Hollywood celebrities, members of Ivy league mafia , gay (with aids), just average Americans. I guess the fda thinks they deserve to die, I sorry but the stupidity of the fda stance on phages boarders on the inhumane maybe mengele is alive and well at the fda.
from New Port Richey, Florida
Just to put it out there, the ethics behind such a cure would be problematic. If we can make a virus to cure, than it can also be used to destroy as well!
There is no ethical problem with the use of phages or other viruses to cure or prevent disease. It is done every day. You probably have gotten live virus vaccines and there is even research going on to use live viruses to cure certain types of cancer - you should google: Biotherapy; then virus therapy and finally phage therapy. People seem to forget that phage therapy is natural and is going on all the time. All that is done when phage therapy is used to cure infections is to isolate, purify and concentrate the right phage so the outcome of a battle between an infection and phages is in favor of the phage and therefore the patient - not making phage therapy available when antibiotics fail is an ethical failure!
There are some amazing Hubble photos on tampabay.com. Take a look:
http://tinyurl.com/cs5sz4
~ Karen McAllister | Tampabay.com | Politifact.com
from neverland
Coating of viruses with shoes and gloves, so they can walk on foreign cells, can be very dangerous. So far we are protected, due to the control and instability of these organisms, but they will also adjust and find their place in nature.
Technology is interesting, but there are other approaches to search for new cures.
karen mcallister, wat the heck does the hubble have to do with phases!!??
Cool picture but I do not understand much about it.
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It is interesting that some are concerned about possible phage interactions, swapping dna and creating a possible reaction in a human.
Companies are putting animal and bacterial dna into plants and grown all over the world. The possibility for plant viruses to swap dna and create a completely new virus that humans have no immunity to grows every day.
It may be that soon humans will find themselves being attacked by plant viruses, because someone spliced pig dna into a tomato plant and a tomato virus mutated.
It is not far-fetched, there are so many viruses that it is simply a matter of time, as long as we continue to swap animal dna into plants, and visa-versa.
Hubris and greed.
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Excellent!
I just wondering if Phage can be use to treat superbug called Necrotizing fasciitis ?
I would focus more on studying if phages could ever be dangerous. If they aren't dangerous, then tell the FDA to stop wasting their time trying to stop them.
A lot of bacteria be harmful to the human body organs, it was often eye irritation, which is part of a bacterial infection which is why we should try to protect the eyes, where there is a glasses site, are interested friends can go and see
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There is no doubt that the article's subject is important and fascinating, however I would like to focus on part of the problem itself.
Maybe it's not the main issue, but I think that one of the reasons why bacterias developed resistance to antibiotics is because we use antibiotics very easily.
There are some doctors that gave prescriptions for every simple cold, or gave the drug again and again, without trying to find another way to deal with the illness (I know many small children that every time they got sick, and their doctor couldn't find the reason for it, he prescribed antibiotics).
Regards
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Instead of doing a reasonable and cautious use of Penicillin, we made it easy for the bacterias to get stronger, and to make it harder for us to fight against them.
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Very interesting article and a good look in the future what is possible. And today everything contains antibacteirial materials, so it is quite easy for bacterias to evolve and get resistent against penicillin
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Quite frankly looking at the pictures, Brillon need to lose weight and eat more heathily. ( www.playarcade4u.com )
Very interesting article and a good look in the future what is possible. And today everything contains antibacteirial materials, so it is quite easy for bacterias to evolve and get resistent against penicillin.
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Just to put it out there, the ethics behind such a cure would be problematic. If we can make a virus to cure, than it can also be used to destroy as well!
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So far we are protected, due to the control and instability of these organisms, but they will also adjust and find their place in nature.
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