New hope in the fight against superbugs

In January 2020, shortly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a 56-year-old man went to a Boston clinic. But the reason for your request It was not a respiratory disease, but a skin condition.: He had skin rashes that spread all over his left arm.

What seemed like a simple rash turned into something more serious. The pain was unbearable and spread not only to one arm, but to all limbs. Doctors had to remove necrotic tissue, but The cause of his illness could not be found.

After conducting a post-mortem examination, they discovered that the culprit was a combination of bacteria, including one that was particularly harmful and resistant to all types of antibiotics. The doctors They did everything they could to help the patient, but the infection did not subside.. His life was in serious danger, but there was still one last chance…

Finally the medical team decided as a last resort administer shock therapy. It was not a new antibiotic, but bacteria-eating virus. And it worked.

Against all odds, the patient recovered, and the case served as the model for a study published 2 years ago in the journal. Nature about the effectiveness of using viruses for suppress bacteria resistant to these drugs.

These viruses, called bacteriophages or simply phages, were previously known to the scientific community but had not been studied until recently. how to use them to fight infections.

They have many benefits and there are many of them. In addition, they are completely harmless to humans. But the downside is that they are extremely selective because They only feed on a certain type of bacteria.therefore, it is difficult to find a suitable virus to fight the infection.

However, we know that They are safe and effective. In 2022, the study was published in the journal Clinical infectious diseases which involved researchers from the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, ​​concluded that more than 50% of patients who received this viral treatment showed significant improvements. Moreover, none of them had any symptoms of rejection.

The problem is that there are few viruses. Therefore, it is critical that new pathogens expand existing viral libraries as they are tested. All the effort is too little fight serious danger What we shouldn’t lose sight of is that the WHO estimates that superbugs cause about 700,000 deaths a year – a figure that can multiply until it reaches 10 million deaths in 2050. Little joke.

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