The Alfred hospital in Melbourne has begun using the pioneering phage therapy, which dates back to 1917 and involves utilising harmless viruses, to kill germs in cases where traditional antibiotics have failed.
A treatment first used more than a century ago, that uses bacteria-killing viruses, is making a comeback in Australia and doctors hope it will help counter a growing crisis of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
“They are patients with severe bacterial infections that are either life-threatening, or limb threatening, or function threatening, where they don’t have any other options left,” Peleg said. “It is a salvage treatment pathway.” Increasingly, phages are now being seen by some scientists as a potential complement or even an alternative to antibiotics, the overuse of which has contributed to increasing bacterial resistance and the advent of the superbug.
According to the World Health Organisation, antimicrobial resistance is a rising threat to global health, jeopardising decades of medical progress and transforming common infections into deadly ones. A UNsuggests yearly deaths from drug-resistant diseases could rise from 700,000 to 10 million in 30 years if no action is taken.
“We’ve been storing the most common bacteria causing infection at The Alfred and are looking for phage that have killing activity against those bacteria to develop a phage biobank,” Peleg said. “This allows us to have a cocktail of multiple phages, prepared to use for future patients with bacterial infections.”
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