Via The Globe and Mail, a fascinating account by Steffanie Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist: Why Canada should revive a forgotten cure to combat the global superbug crisis. She describes how her husband was infected with a highly drug-resistant strain of Acetinobacter baumannii—also known as "Iraqibacter." Excerpt:
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is not just a problem in lower- and middle-income countries. It’s a global crisis. At least 700,000 people die each year from superbug infections globally. The Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) estimates that 250,000 Canadians develop hospital-acquired infections. Of these, about 8,000 die. That’s more than the number of deaths from motor-vehicle accidents, HIV/AIDS and breast cancer combined.
Globally, the problem is getting worse because of overuse of antibiotics in livestock and in people. By 2050, it’s estimated that 10 million people, or one person every three seconds, will die from superbug infections unless urgent action is taken.
The possibility of living in a postantibiotic era where simple surgeries or scrapes could lead to an infection that requires limb amputation or results in death has rekindled interest in alternatives to antibiotics. Phage therapy has been offered for decades in the republic of Georgia and Poland, but due to the lack of rigorous data from clinical trials, it’s not yet licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada or most health agencies in Europe, who still consider it experimental.
So when I proposed phage therapy to the doctors treating Tom in San Diego in early 2016, most of them had never heard of it. And they were skeptical. But with the help of the internet, I managed to find phage researchers – a global village of total strangers – who embarked on a phage hunt to see if they could find some to match Tom’s bacterial strain.
Phages are the most abundant organisms on the planet, and since they’re found wherever you find bacteria, some of the best places to find them is in sewage, barnyard waste and garbage dumps. Two research teams, one from Texas A&M and the other from the U.S. Navy Medical Research Center, rose to the challenge and each developed a phage cocktail personalized for Tom’s Iraqibacter.
As an infectious-disease epidemiologist, watching my husband die from bacteria that used to seem wimpy was like a cruel joke. Injecting him with a legion of viruses derived from sewage to cure him of his superbug infection sounded downright preposterous. But three weeks after my appeal for help, we obtained emergency approval from the FDA for compassionate use of phage therapy. Three days after we injected phages into his bloodstream, Tom miraculously woke from his coma and began his long recovery. He’s now almost fully recovered and back at work.
When news of Tom’s case became public, the story went viral, and in a good way. People started contacting me and his doctors from all over the world, asking us to help save their loved ones from superbug infections. We were able to help some, but others died before we could get phages to them in time.
In response, my colleagues and I founded the non-profit Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) at UC San Diego (UCSD) in 2018. Its goal is to move phage therapy into clinical trials, and in the meantime, to help people obtain experimental phage therapy if they have superbug infections that are no longer responding to antibiotics. To date, IPATH has treated six patients at UCSD and several others in the United States and internationally.
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