The antibiotic resistance It is a public health problem, but more and more studies point to experimental treatments with bacteriophages -a type of virus- as a possible solution. Now one of these therapies has been shown to be effective for the first time in an infection by M. chelonaereports Eph.
The description of this clinical case of a 56-year-old man who attended a hospital in Boston (USA) in January 2020 is published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’: bacteriophage therapy, along with antibiotics and surgery, proved effective in the immunosuppressed patient with infection by Mycobacterium chelonae multirresistente.
“promising” option
The results suggest that bacteriophages could be a “promising” therapeutic option for multidrug-resistant infections, which are a growing public health threat as treatment options are limited.
An alternative approach – phage therapy – is the use of bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects and kills bacteria. Called “phages” for short, they were discovered a little over a century ago.
infect and kill bacteria
Although bacteriophages are capable of infect and kill bacterial hostsits current clinical use is still limited due to complex interactions with the human immune system.
Bacteriophage therapy had previously been shown to successfully treat infection by Mycobacterium abscessus (widely known for its widespread antimicrobial resistance), but not M. chelonae infection.
The latter pathogen is usually associated with skin and soft tissue infections -especially in people with weak immune systems– and, although it is not too frequent, its treatment is difficult due to widespread antimicrobial resistance.
Lyme seronegative
the researcher Jessica Little and his team report in this paper the treatment of an immunocompromised patient with seronegative arthritis and M. chelonae infection with a single bacteriophage (Muddy), along with antibiotics and surgery.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case of M. chelonae infection treated with bacteriophage therapy,” the authors note.
The patient presented “a excellent clinical response“, with their skin lesions showing a decrease in inflammation and nodularity in the months following treatment, and did not manifest adverse side effects to bacteriophage therapy.
good results
Despite the good results, the authors note that further research is needed to improve understanding of human immune responses and the safety of phage therapy (particularly given the clinical burden of infections in immunocompromised individuals), as well as resistance of mycobacteria to drugs.
On her Twitter account, researcher Jessica Little, from Brigham Women’s Hospital in Boston, declares herself “very excited” to share this clinical experience using bacteriophages.
Need for more studies
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“With the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance, phage therapy represents a promising therapeutic platform.”
But, he cautions, more studies are needed to answer questions about, for example, the optimal dose and to better understand the impact of this treatment on the immune system.