While antibiotics still remain the mainstay for treating bacterial infections, researchers may have found a whole new way of treating infections. And this is very good news, as many strains of bacteria have become increasingly resistant to the antibiotics that used to wipe them out. This new method uses the enzymes of bacteriophages to attack the bacteria.
Bacteriophages are tiny viruses that infect bacteria.
After they infect the bacteria, they replicate or make copies of themselves, and then leave the bacteria to go and infect other bacteria. In a report that appears in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences , researchers examined the ability of one of these enzymes, called C 1 phage lysine, to destroy the bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae . Streptococcus is responsible for many common and not so common infections, including strep throat, the flesh-eating disease, and rheumatic fever. Vincent Fischetti, PhD, and his team tested the C 1 phage lysin on mice. It was found to be very effective in killing the streptococci organisms, and it killed them very quickly.