Articles

The Virtuous Side of Viruses

The Virtuous Side of Viruses
This year the world awakened to the fact that the most powerful and sophisticated species on earth is tragically vulnerable to the tiniest and most basic of creatures. Infectious disease specialists have been warning about this for decades.

Clinical News Research Two Part Series: Phage Therapy: From Compassionate Use To Clinical Trials

Phage Therapy Making A Big Comeback
February 10, 2020 | A resurgence of interest in phages over the past few years-in basic and translational research, as well as animal agriculture and aquaculture-is closely tied to the global rise in antimicrobial resistance, rendering once-standard treatments ineffective. In the newly declared “post-antibiotic era,” more than 35,000 people in the U.S.

Phage Therapy: From Compassionate Use To Clinical Trials
February 11, 2020 | At least three different types of phage products currently exist, and all of them are being explored as potential therapeutic remedies for people with drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Phage therapy case listed as one of BBC’s Medical Breakthroughs of 2019

The biggest medical breakthroughs of 2019
It has been a remarkable year of promise in medical science – from inventing ways of treating the untreatable to reversing paralysis and keeping the brain alive after death. “It was like [being the] first man on the Moon,” said 30-year-old Thibault.

Who’s up for a little gut gardening?
A new study from researchers at San Diego State University suggests that ancient viruses called biophages may be just the set of garden tools needed to cultivate a healthy microbiome. One need look no further than the nation’s multi-billion-dollar probiotics industry to understand that many people are entranced by the notion of influencing the complex community of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in the human gut.

Superbug treatment named for patient who inspired its discovery – STAT
E ven for the most elite of bacteria-killers, these superbugs were a challenge. They’d delayed Mallory Smith from getting a lung transplant, and when she’d finally had the surgery, the bacteria quickly migrated into her new lungs. They shrugged off cocktail after cocktail of antibiotics.

Phage Crusade
Also in this issue Jeff Summerhayes knows the drill. The bleak hospital corridors, the calls on the intercom, the IV tubes in his arms dangling from their holders like chandeliers-all have been familiar since Summerhayes’s childhood. But the bug was still in him and all the antibiotics had failed.

As antibiotic resistance threatens millions of lives, is phage therapy the best alternative?
It’s a common myth that only those who use antibiotics regularly, or the sick, elderly and infirm, are at risk of developing antibiotic resistance. The unhappy fact is that anyone can get an infection that’s resistant to the drugs, no matter how healthy and fit they are. I should know.

How a Winnipeg entrepreneur is using Mother Nature’s deadly weapon to fight antibiotic-resistant superbugs
Steven Theriault was enjoying steak and mashed potatoes at a restaurant near Toronto’s Pearson International Airport when somebody at the table mentioned a photograph of his right foot. The prompt sent the French-Canadian microbiologist and chief executive of Winnipeg-based Cytophage Technologies Inc.

Announcing the Goodreads Choice Winner in Best Science & Technology!
Official winner of this year’s Goodreads Choice Award for Science & Technology, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? is also the unofficial winner of this year’s Most Alarming Book Title award. Author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers all those questions that we’re generally afraid to ask about death, decay, decomposition, and other depressing developments.

“Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug” by Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson, is this year’s selection for the KUMC One Book Program.

A long forgotten Canadian discovery used to treat superbugs
A cystic fibrosis patient infected with a dangerous superbug has become one of the first Canadians to try phage therapy — inhaling viruses found in sewage to kill the bacteria in her lungs. The experimental treatment, discovered in Canada over a century ago, may become a new weapon in the war against drug resistant bacteria.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-18/viral-smart-bombs-are-becoming-weapons-against-superbugs

When my husband almost died from antibiotic resistance, I saved his life
The global superbug crisis isn’t on everyone’s radar like climate change is, but my family is trying to change that. I am an infectious disease epidemiologist, yet my experience with antimicrobial resistance was intensely personal.

How Do We Stop The Superbugs? – Folks
In 2015, Steffanie Strathdee and her husband Tom Patterson were vacationing in Egypt when Tom suddenly became very sick. It seemed to be just a stomach bug, but no medicine helped; it only worsened. Steffanie took Tom to an Egyptian clinic. When nothing could be done there, he was medevaced to Germany, where his health further deteriorated.

‘If you want to live, squeeze my hand’
When Tom Patterson started vomiting during an Egyptian holiday he thought he had food poisoning. He was wrong. In fact he was infected with an antibiotic-resistant superbug and only his wife’s determination and a revolutionary new treatment would save him. “Has anyone told Steff her husband is going to die?”

Opinion | Phage therapy could arm the world against superbugs
Antibiotic cocktails that are used to treat superbugs do exist. They are used sparingly and only as a last resort. The irony here is that whether the patient lives or dies, he or she will not end up being a repeat user.

Phage Therapy Could Beat Drug-Resistant Illnesses
Bobby Burgholzer has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that throughout his life has made him vulnerable to bacterial infections in his lungs. Until a few years ago antibiotics held his symptoms mostly at bay, but then the drugs stopped working as well, leaving the 40-year-old medical device salesman easily winded and discouraged.

Is an ancient therapy the answer to multi-drug resistance? – Medical Brief
More than a century since its debut on the fringes of medicine, phage therapy is moving onto centre stage. A couple of recent cases, in particular, have put the therapy under the spotlight. According to a Leaps Magazine report, the deadly drug-resistant superbug Acinetobacter baumannii struck Tom Patterson during a holiday trip with his wife …

Can we kill superbugs before they kill us?
More than 10 million people a year could die from antibiotic-resistant bacteria, warns a United Nations report. Yet scientists hope that recent advances – from reviving ancient cures to enlisting bacteria-slaying viruses – could prevent that dire prediction. By the time Tom Patterson, PhD, was medically evacuated from Egypt to Germany after falling ill on vacation, his condition was rapidly deteriorating.

THE OCTAVIAN REPORT: GOING VIRAL
https://octavianreport.com/article/how-phages-can-save-world-superbugs/

These superbug-fighting viruses are making a comeback
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria – superbugs – are medical monsters of our own design. Honed by years of antibiotic misuse and overuse, superbugs demand new weapons to treat them. Bacteria-hunting viruses called phages have emerged as potentially potent tools in this fight, successfully sicced on vicious infections in a psychologist who caught a superbug on vacation and a London cystic fibrosis patient.

Steffanie Strathdee: ‘Phages have evolved to become perfect predators of bacteria’
Infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee’s husband survived a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection thanks to her suggestion of using an unconventional cure popular in the former Soviet Union: fighting the bug with a virus.

Cystic Fibrosis Patients Turn to Experimental Phage Therapy
Phages have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but there is growing interest in the treatment for cystic fibrosis. Mallory Smith was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease affecting the lungs and digestive system, at age 3.

Genetically Modified Viruses Help Save A Patient With A ‘Superbug’ Infection
For the first time, scientists have used genetically modified viruses to treat a patient fighting an antibiotic-resistant infection. Isabelle Carnell-Holdaway, 17, began the experimental treatment after doctors lost all hope. She was struggling with a life-threateninginfection after a lung transplant. With the new treatment, she has not been completely cured.

Scientist threw ‘Hail Mary pass’ to defeat Husband’s superbug
While vacationing in Egypt during the winter of 2015, an almost fatal event occurred to local resident and University of California San Diego professor Thomas Patterson. “Tom’s symptoms resembled food poisoning at first, but he just kept getting sicker,” said his wife, Steffanie Strathdee, an associate dean of global health and infectious disease epidemiologist at UC San Diego.

The Perfect Predator
Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and evolutionary sociobiologist Thomas Patterson describe Dr. Strathdee’s search for a cure for an antibiotic resistant superbug that almost killed Dr. Patterson.

Researchers work to make experimental phage therapy less of a long shot
T he researcher couldn’t get Mallory Smith’s story out of her mind. Smith was a 25-year-old cystic fibrosis patient, and she was near death at a Pittsburgh hospital, her lungs overwhelmed by bacteria. All antibiotics had failed. As a last resort, her father suggested an experimental treatment known as phage therapy.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2019/03/23/my-husband-was-dying-with-a-superbug-so-i-hunted-down-an-experimental-treatment-to-save-him.html

How this couple used a bacteria-fighting virus to thwart a deadly superbug | CBC Radio
Read Story Transcript Steffanie Strathdee and her husband Tom Patterson were on the trip of a lifetime to Egypt in 2015 when Patterson fell ill from powerful bacteria known as Acinetobacter baumannii. “I was in and out of a coma. I was hallucinating,” Patterson told The Current’s Anna Maria Tremonti.

Why Canada should revive a forgotten cure to combat the global superbug crisis
Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious-disease epidemiologist, and associate dean of global health sciences and professor at the University of California, San Diego, school of medicine. She also directs the new UC San Diego Center for Innovative Phage Application and Therapeutics and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins and Simon Fraser Universities.

Superbug Slayer Dr. Steffanie Strathdee: ‘How I Saved My Husband’s Life – with Sewage’
Steffanie Strathdee knew her husband, Tom Patterson, was running out of time. For three months, she’d watched helplessly as he fought a losing battle for his life – much of it in a coma and connected to a ventilator – while teams of specialists tried unsuccessfully to kill the antibiotic-resistant bacteria devouring his body.

This Viral Therapy Could Help Us Survive the Superbug Era
In November 2015, infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, evolutionary psychologist Tom Patterson, were spending the week of Thanksgiving exploring pyramids and pharaoh’s tombs in Egypt when Patterson came down with what seemed like a nasty bout of food poisoning aboard their cruise ship.

UCSD researchers get OK from FDA for first trial of IV phage therapy
The FDA has given clearance for the first clinical trial in the United States to test an IV-administered bacteriophage-based therapy to kill drug-resistant bacteria.The agency accepted an investigational new drug application for the planned trial from researchers at the University of California, San Diego, according to a news release.

From Superbug To Super Deal: How One Couple Cured the Incurable And Lived to Write the Book
The Book Doctors: You have one of the single most compelling personal stories we’ve ever heard. Give us the trajectory from this incredible period in your lives to the moment where you decided to write a book about it.

Her Husband Was Dying From A Superbug. She Turned To Sewer Viruses Collected By The Navy.
Two days after walking through the pyramids, Tom Patterson got very sick. The psychiatry professor was in Egypt with his wife on one of their many adventurous vacations away from life in California. One minute he was fine, hamming it up in a touristy horse-and-buggy ride across the desert.

Sewage Saved This Man’s Life. Someday It Could Save Yours.
When Thomas Patterson woke up from a two-month coma in March 2016, he learned two things he couldn’t believe: Donald Trump was soon to become the Republican nominee for president, and his wife, Steffanie Strathdee, had saved him from dying of an antibiotic-resistant superbug by injecting him with viruses harvested from sewage.

This man should have died, but unusual infusions saved his life
Tom Patterson should have died during those weeks in March 2016 when he lay comatose, a lethal strain of multi-drug-resistant bacteria raging through his body. Antibiotics proved useless, and his doctors were grim. They were losing him. He should have died, but he didn’t.

This Last-Resort Medical Treatment Offers Hope in the Fight Against Superbugs
Physicians are turning to phage therapy as a treatment, which is seen as one of the more promising frontiers in the war on superbugs.

He was dying. Antibiotics weren’t working. Then doctors tried a forgotten treatment.
Steffanie Strathdee hunched over her laptop, fretting. She barely noticed the kittens asleep next to her or the serene Buddha figure across the living room, anchored next to the glass doors that looked toward the gleaming Pacific.

Once-derided scientist comes out of retirement – and into the virus-selling business
F ORT DETRICK, Md. – By the time word reached the U.S. Navy, the situation was dire. A man was dying. At most, he had a few weeks left. There was an experimental treatment that might help – and one of the biggest stashes in the country was kept here, behind the checkpoints of a military base, in a lab directed by Lt.