Doctors
find virus in a
pond, use it to
destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria in man's heart
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After Yale
Doctors replaced a major blood vessel in a 76-year-old man's heart, his chest became infected with bacteria.*
The usual solution would be to
destroy the harmful
bacteria with antibiotics. But the
Doctors found their antibiotics wouldn't kill the microbe,
P. aeruginosa, which like many
bacteria in recent years, had become resistant to traditional drugs.
So,
Doctors turned to an experimental solution, involving a bacteria-killing
virus known as a bacteriophage.*
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Running out of options,
Doctors employed this still-experimental treatment, inserting hundreds of thousands of viruses — known to combat this very
bacteria — into the man's chest. On Thursday, Yale announced the treatment worked and
published the study in the journal
Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.
Read more...
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Science,
Health,
Antibiotic Resistance,
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