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Viruses Vs. Superbugs: A Solution to the Antibiotics Crisis?
Preface Foreword At the Limits of Medicine Invincible Microbes The Pioneer Era The Renaissance A Parallel Universe Keepers of the Grail in Peril Resurrection What's the Future? Appendix Notes and References Index
- GenresNonfictionScience
298 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 18, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 6, 2019
Interesting history of phage therapy and its possible future
This is mostly a history of bacteriophage therapy with an emphasis on the pioneering work of French bacteriologist Felix d'Herelle beginning before World War I. Much of the early work was done during the Great War in places like the Soviet Union to combat bacterial infection associated with battlefield wounds. D'Herelle himself went to such places as India to study cholera phages and was able to save the lives of many people.
Bacteriophages are viruses that exclusively attack bacteria much the same way other viruses attack our cells by invading and taking over the DNA machinery to reproduce themselves. After getting the bacterium to produce perhaps as many as a thousand or more viruses the phages burst open the bacteria cells walls with enzymes and flow out to attack other bacteria. With such a multiplier effect it doesn't take long to infect and destroy billions of bacteria. Typically there are some bacteria that are immune to the particular phage but their numbers are so small that our immune systems finish them off. Some of the cures in the book have been spectacular. Hausler reports on dying patients up and feeling fine in a day or two.
Over the years there were many such successes. However, because the actual studies and experiments were conducted with less rigor than modern standards require and because there were dosage problems and unsubstantiated claims, bacteriophage therapy has had a checkered history. When penicillin and other antibiotics came into widespread use in the forties, phage therapy was all but forgotten. Now with bacteria becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, interest in phage therapy has returned. Hausler devotes a significant portion of the book describing the problems and promises of phage therapy and explains why progress toward using phages against resistant bacteria has been so slow.
Where it seems likely that new successes will occur (and are occurring) is in veterinarian medicine. Until it becomes easier (and cheaper) to get phage products through the FDA in the US, most of the work will probably be with animals, especially those animals like cows, pigs, and chickens that become our food. With part of the problem of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics due to their use in animal feed, using phage therapy instead, or in combination with antibiotics, could become widespread.
While it is true that bacteria evolve and become resistant to their phages, it is also true that phages themselves can evolve to bypass bacterial resistance. In other words there is a primordial "arms war" going on between phages and bacteria of which we can take advantage. One method microbiologists use to find phages that work against specify bacteria is to take water from sewers where the bacteria have been excreted from people or animals and search that water for phages. There will be found the phages that have evolved to attack the bacteria that have evolved!
The book has plenty of endnotes and a good index. Of special interest perhaps are the appendices, one listing common bacteria and what they do to us, and the other detailing the advantages and disadvantages of phage therapy.
All and all this is a good introduction to an exciting and promising area of medical science. But note well the question mark at the end of the book's subtitle: "A Solution to the Antibiotic Crisis?" It would appear that phage therapy will not solve the crisis by itself, but will most likely allow us to rely less on antibiotics, thereby allowing some antibiotics to be used for longer periods of time before bacterial resistance sets in.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
This is mostly a history of bacteriophage therapy with an emphasis on the pioneering work of French bacteriologist Felix d'Herelle beginning before World War I. Much of the early work was done during the Great War in places like the Soviet Union to combat bacterial infection associated with battlefield wounds. D'Herelle himself went to such places as India to study cholera phages and was able to save the lives of many people.
Bacteriophages are viruses that exclusively attack bacteria much the same way other viruses attack our cells by invading and taking over the DNA machinery to reproduce themselves. After getting the bacterium to produce perhaps as many as a thousand or more viruses the phages burst open the bacteria cells walls with enzymes and flow out to attack other bacteria. With such a multiplier effect it doesn't take long to infect and destroy billions of bacteria. Typically there are some bacteria that are immune to the particular phage but their numbers are so small that our immune systems finish them off. Some of the cures in the book have been spectacular. Hausler reports on dying patients up and feeling fine in a day or two.
Over the years there were many such successes. However, because the actual studies and experiments were conducted with less rigor than modern standards require and because there were dosage problems and unsubstantiated claims, bacteriophage therapy has had a checkered history. When penicillin and other antibiotics came into widespread use in the forties, phage therapy was all but forgotten. Now with bacteria becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics, interest in phage therapy has returned. Hausler devotes a significant portion of the book describing the problems and promises of phage therapy and explains why progress toward using phages against resistant bacteria has been so slow.
Where it seems likely that new successes will occur (and are occurring) is in veterinarian medicine. Until it becomes easier (and cheaper) to get phage products through the FDA in the US, most of the work will probably be with animals, especially those animals like cows, pigs, and chickens that become our food. With part of the problem of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics due to their use in animal feed, using phage therapy instead, or in combination with antibiotics, could become widespread.
While it is true that bacteria evolve and become resistant to their phages, it is also true that phages themselves can evolve to bypass bacterial resistance. In other words there is a primordial "arms war" going on between phages and bacteria of which we can take advantage. One method microbiologists use to find phages that work against specify bacteria is to take water from sewers where the bacteria have been excreted from people or animals and search that water for phages. There will be found the phages that have evolved to attack the bacteria that have evolved!
The book has plenty of endnotes and a good index. Of special interest perhaps are the appendices, one listing common bacteria and what they do to us, and the other detailing the advantages and disadvantages of phage therapy.
All and all this is a good introduction to an exciting and promising area of medical science. But note well the question mark at the end of the book's subtitle: "A Solution to the Antibiotic Crisis?" It would appear that phage therapy will not solve the crisis by itself, but will most likely allow us to rely less on antibiotics, thereby allowing some antibiotics to be used for longer periods of time before bacterial resistance sets in.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
May 4, 2009
This is a good book. I have both the English and German versions, and the English is a good translation of the original.
This is not a good book to read if you panic when hearing about medical problems. It is an excellent book if you are willing to hear bad news AND learn ways to make the situation better.
It is becoming out of date, but the fundamentals are the same: microbes are capable of mutation, as are all life forms; some mutations create more easily spread or more resistant forms; there are ways that humans operate that increase the mutation rate and therefore the likelihood that a microbe will develop into a more dangerous pathogen; there are many simple things that humans can do to reduce both mutation rate and transmission of pathogens to humans.
There are good histories of the study of microbes (not all are pathogens, of course) and the ways some microbes can be used to prevent the dangers of other microbes, and a description of some current lines of investigation.
This is not a good book to read if you panic when hearing about medical problems. It is an excellent book if you are willing to hear bad news AND learn ways to make the situation better.
It is becoming out of date, but the fundamentals are the same: microbes are capable of mutation, as are all life forms; some mutations create more easily spread or more resistant forms; there are ways that humans operate that increase the mutation rate and therefore the likelihood that a microbe will develop into a more dangerous pathogen; there are many simple things that humans can do to reduce both mutation rate and transmission of pathogens to humans.
There are good histories of the study of microbes (not all are pathogens, of course) and the ways some microbes can be used to prevent the dangers of other microbes, and a description of some current lines of investigation.
May 9, 2017
still amazing 10 years later, very informative. For those of you interested, a lot has been done since.
September 30, 2017
Acceptable, but more indepth info on the virology techniques would be useful.
January 26, 2021
Central theme page 111 and 112
very well noted.
very well noted.
December 19, 2012
Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria:
We are in trouble because many common pathogenic bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. Because of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, many patients end up with chronic infections and limbs that need to be amputated. Boils and carbuncles are caused by staphylococcal bacteria on the skin. Pseudomonas aeruginosa often infects burn wounds. Clostridium difficile causes intestinal infections in hospitals. One bacteria studied was Clostridium, which causes gas gangrene. People lost interest in the phage treatment for typhoid fever when the antibiotic chloramphenicol became available in 1947. In India, many typhoid fever infections have become resistant to chloramphenicol. Antibiotics often fail for bone infections, due to poor circulation. Antibiotics kill beneficial bacteria, also.
Viruses That Eat Bacteria:
A novel solution to this problem is to use bacteriophages. Bacteriophages kill bacteria. Phages kill only bacteria, not plant or animal cells. They are specific. Each strain of phage kills only a particular strain of bacteria. They are more specific than antibiotics. Bacteria mutate or receive plasmids that make them resistant to a particular phage, but that phage can evolve so that it can continue killing that strain of bacteria. Hospital sewage is a good place to look for bacteriophages that attack hospital bacteria. Untreated city sewage are also a good place to look for phages. During World War II, Canadian and American scientists studied using phages to treat typhoid fever, with is caused by Salmonella typhi. Using bacteriophages to treat infection was considered during the early years of molecular biology, but abandoned by most researchers when antibiotics came along, so phages no longer seemed necessary.
Pasteur Institute:
Much of the early science was done by French scientist Félix d'Herelle worked at the Pasteur Institute during World War I
d'Herelle investigated the use of bacteriophage against:
• the Shigella bacteria that cause dysentery (a major problem in the trenches)
• the Salmonella bacteria that infect chickens
• the Vibrio cholerae bacteria that causes cholera (major study in India)
Eliava Institute in Tbilisi Georgia:
Georgiy Georgievitch Eliava studied with d"herelle at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Later, Eliava brought Félix d'Herelle to Tbilisi. The Institute for Microbiology in Tbilisi was founded in 1923 with Eliava as scientific director. It appears that Eliava may have come to the attention Lavrenti Beria. Eliava disappeared in 1937. Eliava's stepdaughter Hanna was deported to a camp in Kazakhstan. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the phage research institute in Georgia has fallen on hard times.
Scientific Rigor:
Early research on the medical use of bacteriophages failed to adhere to the modern standard of scientific rigor. After World War II, Rene Dubos studied the treatment of mouse dysentery with phage in a rigorously scientific way. In order to prove definitively that phages are a good treatment, hundreds of millions of dollars of more research is required. The expense to perform clinic studies to obtain FDA approval for drugs for humans is so great, that much phage research is now being directed towards veterinary products.
Biotech:
In recent years, a number of biotech companies have pursued phage therapeutics:
• Gangagen Biotechnologies of Bangalore (half-bacterial-half-viral hybrid protein to fight staph infections)
• Intralytix (who product ListShield™ is used to kill Listeria monocytogenes on seafood)
• OmniLytics (producer of AgriPhage, a pesticide for bacterial stem canker in tomato plants)
• Viridax (developing phage therapies for staphylococcus aureus respiratory infections)
Soviet Georgia:
The most fascinating item in the book does not concern bacteriophages at all. It is a memoir by a Georgian that states that during Stalin's reign of terror in the 1930s, members of cinema audiences were afraid to be the first one to stop clapping when Stalin's photograph was shown, because it might lead to an arrest by the secret police.
We are in trouble because many common pathogenic bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. Because of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, many patients end up with chronic infections and limbs that need to be amputated. Boils and carbuncles are caused by staphylococcal bacteria on the skin. Pseudomonas aeruginosa often infects burn wounds. Clostridium difficile causes intestinal infections in hospitals. One bacteria studied was Clostridium, which causes gas gangrene. People lost interest in the phage treatment for typhoid fever when the antibiotic chloramphenicol became available in 1947. In India, many typhoid fever infections have become resistant to chloramphenicol. Antibiotics often fail for bone infections, due to poor circulation. Antibiotics kill beneficial bacteria, also.
Viruses That Eat Bacteria:
A novel solution to this problem is to use bacteriophages. Bacteriophages kill bacteria. Phages kill only bacteria, not plant or animal cells. They are specific. Each strain of phage kills only a particular strain of bacteria. They are more specific than antibiotics. Bacteria mutate or receive plasmids that make them resistant to a particular phage, but that phage can evolve so that it can continue killing that strain of bacteria. Hospital sewage is a good place to look for bacteriophages that attack hospital bacteria. Untreated city sewage are also a good place to look for phages. During World War II, Canadian and American scientists studied using phages to treat typhoid fever, with is caused by Salmonella typhi. Using bacteriophages to treat infection was considered during the early years of molecular biology, but abandoned by most researchers when antibiotics came along, so phages no longer seemed necessary.
Pasteur Institute:
Much of the early science was done by French scientist Félix d'Herelle worked at the Pasteur Institute during World War I
d'Herelle investigated the use of bacteriophage against:
• the Shigella bacteria that cause dysentery (a major problem in the trenches)
• the Salmonella bacteria that infect chickens
• the Vibrio cholerae bacteria that causes cholera (major study in India)
Eliava Institute in Tbilisi Georgia:
Georgiy Georgievitch Eliava studied with d"herelle at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Later, Eliava brought Félix d'Herelle to Tbilisi. The Institute for Microbiology in Tbilisi was founded in 1923 with Eliava as scientific director. It appears that Eliava may have come to the attention Lavrenti Beria. Eliava disappeared in 1937. Eliava's stepdaughter Hanna was deported to a camp in Kazakhstan. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the phage research institute in Georgia has fallen on hard times.
Scientific Rigor:
Early research on the medical use of bacteriophages failed to adhere to the modern standard of scientific rigor. After World War II, Rene Dubos studied the treatment of mouse dysentery with phage in a rigorously scientific way. In order to prove definitively that phages are a good treatment, hundreds of millions of dollars of more research is required. The expense to perform clinic studies to obtain FDA approval for drugs for humans is so great, that much phage research is now being directed towards veterinary products.
Biotech:
In recent years, a number of biotech companies have pursued phage therapeutics:
• Gangagen Biotechnologies of Bangalore (half-bacterial-half-viral hybrid protein to fight staph infections)
• Intralytix (who product ListShield™ is used to kill Listeria monocytogenes on seafood)
• OmniLytics (producer of AgriPhage, a pesticide for bacterial stem canker in tomato plants)
• Viridax (developing phage therapies for staphylococcus aureus respiratory infections)
Soviet Georgia:
The most fascinating item in the book does not concern bacteriophages at all. It is a memoir by a Georgian that states that during Stalin's reign of terror in the 1930s, members of cinema audiences were afraid to be the first one to stop clapping when Stalin's photograph was shown, because it might lead to an arrest by the secret police.
December 9, 2009
This is a fascinating book that details the discovery and uses of bacteriophages, viruses that attack bacteria. They are extremely effective against many very nasty diseases, e.g. anthrax, diarrhea, gas gangrene, ecoli, listeriosis, typhoid, dysentery, MRSA staph!, pneumonia, cholera, bubonic plague, etc, and with NO side effects. Phages do require special handling to develop, one consideration is that they are generally only effective with one or a just a few strains of bacteria. On the other hand a recent study of 3000 MRSA staph bacteria collected from all over the world showed that 70% of them belonged to only 5 strains. Also some .5% of the population is allergic to antibiotics, and some reactions include death. Also antibiotics can kill good bacteria in the body making room for bad bacteria to move in and cause damage. Billions of phages can be injested or injected, they dissolve the bacteria they target, then pass out of the body, in rare cases minor rashes have been noted, but usually there are NO side effects! The book is filled with incredible and heart-warming stories of horrible infections that were cured by phages when nothing else worked. And there is "Rambo" the phange that kills 98% of MRSA anti-biotic resistant staph. While drug companies are probably reluctant to invest in research because they can't patent viruses (yet) I think the use of phages will continue to grow as antibiotics become less and less effective. This is a great read that is very easy to understand, I've had 2 biology and 2 chemistry courses in my life and this book wasn't hard to read at all.
December 27, 2014
This work stands out as a gem simply because there is little long-form treatment of this topic, phages. This work is accessible and a proved to be a smooth read. Importantly, the historical content in this book is a rare assemblage of the history of phages and their development as a therapy against bacteria. Timely indeed as we continually turn to these viruses as inspiration for both therapy and genetic engineering. For the non-cognoscenti, one gets a powerful glimpse into the dynamism of the invisible world of microbes, and perhaps can shed our collective static images of evolution.
June 1, 2014
Phage therapy was introduced in Georgia (of the USSR) and other places behind the Iron Curtain. Now is a good time for it to come to light elsewhere! Superbugs such as CRKP and MRSA have no weapons against these therapeutic bacteriophages, and God willing, they won't develop anytime soon.
Phage therapy will solve what antibiotics no longer can.
Phage therapy will solve what antibiotics no longer can.
November 11, 2008
A great book about the little known world of phage therapy. It explains origin and uses examples with real people, who have had or currently have resistant bacterial strains. Kind of Scary, but very exciting. Very eye opening to me, and the weakness of westernized medicine.
Want to read
April 4, 2008As heard on "Talk of the Nation"'s Science Friday on NPR.
October 26, 2009
Interesting historical account of the discovery of bacterialphages. Written with the nonscientific reader in mind.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews