Phage therapy

Phage therapy is an alternative to antibiotics, being developed for clinical use by many research groups in Europe, the US and Russia; the use of bacteriophages to treat infected wounds has been commonplace in Russia for many decades. Isolated from Western advances in antibiotic production, Russian scientists developed phage therapy to treat the wounds of soldiers in field hospitals. The success rate is as good as, if not better than any antibiotic.

The idea is that the virus infects the bacteria whilst not interacting with the surrounding human tissue. The virus replicates quickly so a single, small dose is usually sufficient. Furthermore, phages can be selected to target only the desired bacteria.

The most clear benefit of phage therapy is that bacteria cannot easily develop resistance to phages, so the technique is likely to be devoid of the problems similar to antibiotic resistance.

Research groups in the UK and in Georgia (a former Soviet state) are creating broad spectrum phage and targeted MRSA treatments in a variety of forms - including impregnated dressings for wounds.