Time to talk politics. Not Dems vs. Reps or left vs. right, up vs. down, etc. I’m talking the politics of science, specifically medicine. Although the scene is changing, there have been (and still are) strong inclinations to believe Western scientific/medical practices are the end-all-be-all and everything else is foreign bunk. However, studies and reviews are few and far between actually confirming or denying the actual bunk-itude of non-Western/”traditional” medical practices. But again, this is changing; the World Health Organization now has a list of ailments treatable with acupuncture and other various Eastern therapies are becoming more popular in conjunction with Western ones. This brings me to what I really want to talk about: bacteriophage therapy.
Bacteriophage are viruses that target bacteria, hijacking bacterial genetic machinery in order to replicate themselves. Phage may be lytic or lysogenic. Lytic phage will get to work right quick replicating before making the bacteria literally explode with baby viruses. Cute. Lysogenic phage on the other hand are patient. They hide viral DNA or RNA (viruses may have either) in the bacterial genome until the time is right. Then the bacteria explodes. Furthermore, phage are species specific, so one kind of virus will only attack one kind of bacteria. Beginning to see the possibilities? Human bacterial pathogens don’t stand a chance. And unlike antibiotics, phage will evolve alongside their prey, making them virtually immune to the resistances plaguing modern medicine. So why aren’t we all taking bacteriophage instead of antibiotics? Researched off and on since the latter 1800s, phage were even produced commercially to fight bacterial infections. But challenges were made to the efficacy of phage therapy and antibiotics quickly became much more popular so phage were largely forgotten. In the West, anyway, in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, bacteriophage therapy use and research persisted, displaying success in combating multi-drug resistant bacteria with phage. It’s like a miracle cure, but politics prevented phage from staging a comeback in the West. Despite the mounting evidence in support of phage therapy, the reports were all in Georgian, or Polish to a lesser extent (the leading institute in this field since the 1920’s is in Georgia, the one in Poland popped up in the 1950’s). Not terribly popular languages outside Eastern Europe even today. When some papers were eventually produced in English, the writer apparently never spoke to the scientists or even had a basic knowledge of medicine because it claimed (among other things) that the phage were useful against allergies, besides mixing up which phage were to be used on which infections. The Western scientists were not impressed. Even if the English papers were accurate, the most research came from “damn, dirty Commies” so it never really had a chance. UNTIL NOW.
Damn, dirty Commie phage, curing all our shit.
OK, not really “NOW” now, but “now” twenty-some years ago. In the ‘80s phage research experienced a revival in Great Britain at the hands of William Smith. Since then papers have been piling up in support of phage therapy and its superiority over antibiotics. However, more rigorous studies need to be conducted to further understand its efficacy, so it will be a while before you can use a virus on your E. coli infection. Still, when the headlines of multi-drug resistant bacteria loom, remember that for every superbug there’s a superflyswatter.
It just needs to go through clinical trials.
Source
Sulakvelidze, Alexander, Zephira Alavidze and J. Glenn Morris, Jr. 2001. “Bacteriophage Therapy”. Antimicrobial Agents Chemotherapy. 45(3): 649-659.
Photo credit Dennehy Lab, Queens College: http://dennehylab.bio.qc.cuny.edu/
Daily Science (blog) 