Question

Why is understanding bacterial resistance to phage critical to their use clinically?

Answer 1

Answer. In today's time we know that using more and more antibiotics by the people, the bacteria has developed resistance against them and it is going to be detrimental to human life if they get suffer from the bacterial infections. In terms of science, antibiotics are the substance which disrupts the one or more processes that bacteria need in order to survive. So a single antibiotic can be used against many bacterial infections only then if different bacteria uses the same process to increase their population.

While Phages are virus which enters into the bacteria by disrupting their cell wall and enters their DNA in the bacteria. Then their DNA doubles itself and packaged into protein coat structures and finally come out through the the bacterial cell wall by making holes in it.

There are some benefits of using phages against bacterial infections because phages are specific to one species of bacteria and therefore unlikely to disturb useful microbes in out gut. So phage can be used to treat infection without disturbing the community of bacteria. Phages are also helpful in killing antibiotic resistance bacteriaand the way in which phages kill resiatant bacteria, it is difficult for bacteria to develop resistance against phages.Phages can also kill the bacteria with biofilm because some antibiotics are unable to kill the bacteria with biofilm.

But due to certain limitations phages can't be used because they are difficult to prepare and if they are prepared then they are treated with the specific host bacterial cell and first we need to grow the colony of bacteria. After their encounter with bacteria phage will reproduce by killing bacteria and it would be very difficult to isloate the bacteriphages from a multitude of bacteria. And phages take alonger time to employ in compariaon to antibiotics.