Superbugs have a natural enemy

The looming scourge of the superbug — bacteria that antibiotics can’t kill — threatens to bring back the era of death by infection.

But there is hope on the horizon.

Superbugs will be responsible for over 10 million deaths per year globally by the year 2050, according to the BBC. Even as recently as 2014, around 700,000 deaths can be blamed on infections that couldn’t be cured with modern antibiotics. The World Health Organization classifies these bugs as an imminent threat to human health.

According to a Time Magazine special report, one treatment currently being researched attacks these superbugs from a completely different angle. This method requires using bacteriophages, or phages, to destroy the bacteria.
Phages are nature’s bacteria fighter, and there are estimated to be around 10 million trillion different phages throughout the world. Phages work by injecting their DNA into a bacterial cell, where it replicates until the bacteria bursts open and dies. Phages are unique in that each strain seems only to attack a particular type of bacteria. This means that treatment with phages will leave the beneficial bacteria intact within the body and just single out the dangerous kind.

Using phages to attack bacteria is not a new idea. They have been used to treat infections throughout the world for nearly a century, but it has had a reputation as an unsafe and clunky treatment. New advances in medical knowledge and technology, however, have shown that this therapy can be a useful cure for cases in which antibiotics have failed, and it remains a promising solution to the impending superbug threat because there is a nearly limitless supply of different phages to use against the bacteria.