Genetically Modified Viruses Help Save a Patient With a 'Superbug' Infection

reporter shares a report from NPR: 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-threatening infection after a lung transplant. With the new treatment, she has not been completely cured. But the Faversham, England, teenager has recovered so much that she has resumed a near-normal life. The treatment involves a cocktail of three viruses known as 'bacteriophages' that specifically attack the dangerous bacterium causing her infection. 'These viruses have one specialty: they naturally infect bacteria,' reports Live Science. 'Once they do so, the viruses replicate inside the bacterial cell, and, through this replicative process, kill the bacterium.' The downside with phages is that they're so specific to the bacteria they infect that a phage that works for one patient with a particular infection may not work for another patient infected with the same species of bacteria.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

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