3 ms·

What about gut bacteria? Is that going to be destroyed? Why aren't phages being researched? Does this target mitochondria too? Other bacteriocidal antibiotics

• Fomite 10y ago
  Phages are being researched. This literally comes up in every single HN thread on antibiotics, so once more, posting my "Why Phages Aren't the Answer" shortlist. Note that I love phage therapy - this is the problems as seen by someone who doesn't think it's a dead end: Phage therapy is neat, it really is, but there are a couple major issues: - There is no such thing as a "broad spectrum" phage. You can't do empirical treatment using phages, and there's not really "off the shelf" phage therapy - it tends to be a bespoke creation for a particular infection. - There's some serious regulatory problems, similar to those experienced by fecal transplant treatments. We're not yet really equipped to think about handling evolving, custom microbes as a treatment. - Because of the first, it's going to require a considerable amount more lab capacity than most clinical settings currently have, and considerable delays until treatment. - There's also some biosafety issues around phage prep, but those are easily solvable. It's a great way to treat particularly resistant or hard to treat infections, but it's not a particularly great general solution. There's a reason it was abandoned in countries with easy access to antibiotics - they're just roundly superior in basically every respect.