International Programs

The rapid development of antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus warrants a search for new methods of antibacterial treatment. One treatment under consideration is bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophage therapy is the use of bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections. It has been practiced in the Soviet Union for the past seventy years and is currently experiencing revived interest in the West. Five peer-reviewed scientific papers newly translated from Russian show the efficacy of commercially produced medicinal bacteriophage preparations against S. aureus and other important human pathogen. The Russian papers detail several promising effects of bacteriophage therapy. These include a rollback of oxacillin resistance in S aureus, and the normalization of B- and T-cell levels after treatment. A short comparison of the papers with a handful of papers from the English literature illustrates the practical knowledge that Soviet and Russian research can add to existing English literature on the subject of S. aureus bacteriophage therapy.