Link to Pubmed [PMID] – 28497737
Link to DOI – 10.1051/medsci/20173304011
Med Sci (Paris) 2017 Apr; 33(4): 410-416
The continuous increase in antibiotic resistance among bacteria in infectious diseases associated with the lack of new antibiotics able to circumvent them are urging physicians, researchers and politicians to look for others options for treatments. Among those, phage therapy (use of natural viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages) is one of the most promising approaches. In this review, we first focus on the problematic raised by multidrug resistant bacteria before addressing the main biological characteristics of bacteriophages, as well as the credibility and the relevance of phage therapy. We then introduce human applications, their potentials and limits.