The Use of Bacteriophages for treating diseases.
Fascinating article at
CrumbTrail. Back40 links to several articles outlining the history and current development of bacteriophages, their 'decline' when 'modern' antibiotics entered the arena and their 're-discovery' as resistant diseases are starting to develop. The premise is simplicity itself - find something that makes the bacteria sick and die. There are lots of viruses out there that do this.
From CrumbTrail:
bq.
Adam, Had em
The use of bacteriophages, rather than antibiotics, is receiving
increasing attention
From the linked Eureka Alert article:
bq. Researchers from Nottingham University in the United Kingdom have developed a new method for reducing the level of contamination of chickens by the foodborne bacterium Campylobacter jejuni. They are using bacterial viruses to target and kill the organism. They report their research today at the 104th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
bq. In the study, the researchers isolated a number of naturally occurring bacterial viruses (called bacteriophage) that can infect and kill campylobacter bacteria from the feces of chickens. They then used these bacteriophage to treat chickens that were infected with campylobacter.
bq. "Campylobacter bacteriophage are naturally present in chickens and have no recorded detrimental effect on the health of chickens or human beings," says Catherine Loc-Carrillo, a researcher on the study. "In nature a balance exists between predator and prey which allows both [the bacterium and the bacteriophage] to flourish. Here the use of bacteriophage to reduce campylobacters within the chicken gut merely involves shifting nature's balance in our favor for a short period of time. This time point should be just prior to when the birds are sent for slaughter."
For more background, Back40 provides this link:
History
Posted by DaveH at May 25, 2004 11:26 AM