review · Antibiotics
Antibiotic resistance presents an escalating global public health challenge, made worse by the slow pace of new antibiotic development. While bacteriophage therapy was previously viewed as a direct alternative to antibiotics, the emergence of resistance against phages also threatens its standalone effectiveness. Combining bacteriophages with antibiotics offers a viable strategy for managing multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. In most evaluated instances, these combination therapies have produced positive therapeutic outcomes, although certain combinations show no measurable benefit. Beyond pairing phages with antibiotics, synergistic approaches that combine bacteriophages with other interventions, such as probiotics, also show promise for treating drug-resistant infections. Evaluating and refining these combined regimens provides an avenue to overcome the individual resistance limitations associated with using either antibiotics or phages in isolation.
Multidrug-resistant bacterial infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat as existing drugs lose efficacy and new antibiotics remain scarce. Because bacteria can also develop resistance to alternative single-agent treatments like phages, combining existing treatments provides a practical way to combat resilient infections without relying solely on the discovery of entirely new antibacterial compounds.
This research highlights potential therapeutic applications for clinical healthcare providers and biopharmaceutical developers tackling multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. The approach focuses on combining existing antibiotics, phages, and probiotics rather than discovering new chemical entities. However, because some combinations fail to provide therapeutic benefits, this concept appears to be at an early research stage, requiring specific pairing validation before clinical formulation or market deployment.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is a significant global health challenge that has intensified in recent years. The burden of antibiotic resistance on public health is augmented due to its multifaceted nature, as well as the slow-paced and limited development of new antibiotics. The threat posed by resistance is now existential in phage therapy, which had long been touted as a promising replacement for antibiotics. Consequently, it is imperative to explore the potential of combination therapies involving antibiotics and phages as a feasible alternative for treating infections with multidrug-resistant bacteria. Although either bacteriophage or antibiotics can potentially treat bacterial infections, they are each fraught with resistance. Combination therapies, however, yielded positive outcomes in most cases; nonetheless, a few combinations did not show any benefit. Combination therapies comprising the synergistic activity of phages and antibiotics and combinations of phages with other treatments such as probiotics hold promise in the treatment of drug-resistant bacterial infections.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.3390/antibiotics12081329
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
