None of the 20 subjects have shown any adverse impacts.
“Given the complexity and great variation of these patients and their individual conditions, it is not possible to draw any broad conclusions, except that phage treatment of mycobacterial infections shows promise and should be explored further, especially for treating patients with few or no other good options,” said Constance Benson, MD, professor of medicine and global public health at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
“In phages, evolution has produced an effective killer of bacteria, one that offers enormous potential in the worldwide fight against antibiotic resistance. This paper is a glimpse of what might and can be. It starts with NTM infections, but the number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial species out there is large and growing.
Methods: Mycobacterium isolates from 200 culture-positive patients with symptomatic disease were screened for phage susceptibilities. One or more lytic phages were identified for 55 isolates.
Results: No adverse reactions attributed to therapy were seen in any patient regardless of the pathogen, phages administered, or the route of delivery. Favorable clinical or microbiological responses were observed in 11 patients. Neutralizing antibodies were identified in serum after initiation of phage delivery intravenously in eight patients, potentially contributing to lack of treatment response in four cases but were not consistently associated with unfavorable responses in others.
Conclusions: Phage treatment of Mycobacterium infections is challenging due to the limited repertoire of therapeutically useful phages, but favorable clinical outcomes in patients lacking any other treatment options support continued development of adjunctive phage therapy for some mycobacterial infections.
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