Virus tricks the immune system into ignoring bacterial infections

[Andy]

A bacterium which is responsible for about 10% of hospital-acquired infections in the US uses a virus to trick a person’s immune system into ignoring it.

The virus, known as a phage, infects the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, which frequently resists antibiotic treatment. The phage prompts the immune system into going after it instead of its microbe host, researchers report1 on 28 March in Science. The bacterium and the phage, called Pf, exist in a symbiotic relationship that scientists suspect is more widespread in the microbial world than previously believed. The finding could help to explain why the immune system tolerates helpful bacteria, such as those in the gut, and could lead to better treatments for infections.

Although some phages kill their bacterial hosts, others live happily inside the microbes without killing them. Researchers have long suspected that this coexistence means that the viruses are advantageous for the bacteria in some way.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00991-4

 

[Sly Saint]

Phage therapy is widely being reconsidered as an alternative to antibiotics.

Phages are currently being used therapeutically to treat bacterial infections that do not respond to conventional antibiotics, particularly in Russia and Georgia. There is also a phage therapy unit in Wrocław, Poland, established 2005, the only such centre in a European Union country.

(from wiki)

 

[MeSci]

26 March 2019

Can phages save us as antibiotics stop working?

People Fixing The World

How phages – viruses that kill bacteria – are saving lives.

Tens of thousands of people die every year because bacterial infections are becoming resistant to antibiotics. That number is expected to explode, as more antibiotics stop working, making antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, one of the gravest health threats facing humanity.

But could viruses come to the rescue? Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are viruses that infect and kill bacteria. They were discovered 100 years ago and have been used to treat infections for decades in Georgia. But despite their abundance in nature and proven ability to kill infections, their potential has not yet been realised outside the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Steffanie Strathdee, who stumbled across phages as she tried to save her husband’s life, is now leading a campaign to put phages on the map. But can their use be scaled up from individual and costly treatments to a fully-operational weapon in the war against AMR?

Reporter: Tom Colls

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p074jh1c