Phages: Bacterial eaters from Georgia to fight antibiotic resistance

[Judi Lynn]

Date 21.11.2019
Author Tim Ruben Weimer (fs)

What are we to do when antibiotics are no longer effective? Patients from all over the world come to Georgia to be treated with bacteriophages. In the meantime, phage therapy is also available in Belgium.

Tanja Diederen lives near Maastricht in the Netherlands. She has been suffering from Hidradenitis suppurativa for 30 years. Its a chronic skin disease in which the hair roots are inflamed under pain — often around the armpits and on the chest.

€3,900 for treatment in Georgia

In August 2019, the now 50-year-old made a radical decision: she discontinued the antibiotics, which were becoming less and less effective. And she traveled to Georgia for two weeks to undergo treatment with bacteriophages (or phages for short).

Such phage therapy is not yet approved in most Western European countries. She paid 3,900 euros out of her own pocket in the hope that the unconventional therapy would help her.

Bacteriophages are viruses that fight against the proliferation of their host bacteria. Therapy with bacteriophages involves the oral administration of a single, isolated type of phage. They attach themselves to their bacterial counterparts in the patient's body in order to survive.

More:
https://www.dw.com/en/phages-bacterial-eaters-from-georgia-to-fight-antibiotic-resistance/a-51350421

[Native]

1. I wonder how long treatment has to continue...

The woman mentioned in the article appears to be undergoing a lengthy treatment process.