ReviewMicrobiology spectrum2017
Bacteriophage Clinical Use as Antibacterial "Drugs": Utility and Precedent.
Review in Microbiology spectrum, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Isolation and characterization of novel bacteriophages with broad-spectrum lytic activity against carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae capsular pathotypes K1, K2, K3, K5, and K20.Biology direct · 2026Article
- Systematic, high-throughput characterization of bacteriophage gene essentiality on diverse hosts.Cell host & microbe · 2025Article
- Enhanced bacteriostatic effects of phage vB_C4 and cell wall-targeting antibiotic combinations against drug-resistantMicrobiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Isolation, characterization and therapeutic efficacy of lytic bacteriophage ZK22 against Salmonella Typhimurium in mice.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Isolation and Characterization of Novel Lytic Bacteriophages Infecting Carbapenem-Resistant Pathogenic Diarrheagenic and UropathogenicInfection and drug resistance · 2024Article
- The applications of animal models in phage therapy: An update.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Review
- Phage Therapy-Challenges, Opportunities and Future Prospects.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- The Potential of Bacteriophage-Antibiotic Combination Therapy in Treating Infections with Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Translating phage therapy into the clinic: Recent accomplishments but continuing challenges.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Phage Therapy in the 21st Century: Is There Modern, Clinical Evidence of Phage-Mediated Efficacy?Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Improving Phage-Biofilm In Vitro Experimentation.Viruses · 2021Article
- Bacteriophages as Potential Tools for Use in Antimicrobial Therapy and Vaccine Development.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- A Case of Phage Therapy against Pandrug-ResistantViruses · 2021Article
- The Safety and Efficacy of Phage Therapy for Bone and Joint Infections: A Systematic Review.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- The Safety and Efficacy of Phage Therapy for Superficial Bacterial Infections: A Systematic Review.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Aminoglycoside Antibiotics Inhibit Mycobacteriophage Infection.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Broadscale phage therapy is unlikely to select for widespread evolution of bacterial resistance to virus infection.Virus evolution · 2020Article
- Approaches to optimize therapeutic bacteriophage and bacteriophage-derived products to combat bacterial infections.Virus genes · 2020Review
- Pharmacologically Aware Phage Therapy: Pharmacodynamic and Pharmacokinetic Obstacles to Phage Antibacterial Action in Animal and Human Bodies.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2019Review
- Correlation of Host Range Expansion of Therapeutic Bacteriophage Sb-1 with Allele State at a Hypervariable Repeat Locus.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For phage therapy-the treatment of bacterial infections using bacterial viruses-a key issue is the conflict between apparent ease of clinical application, on the one hand, and on the other hand, numerous difficulties that can be associated with undertaking preclinical development. These conflicts between achieving efficacy in the real world versus rigorously understanding that efficacy should not be surprising because equivalent conflicts have been observed in applied biology for millennia: exploiting the inherent, holistic tendencies of useful systems, e.g., of dairy cows, inevitably is easier than modeling those systems or maintaining effectiveness while reducing such systems to isolated parts. Trial and error alone, in other words, can be a powerful means toward technological development. Undertaking trial and error-based programs, especially in the clinic, nonetheless is highly dependent on those technologies possessing both inherent safety and intrinsic tendencies toward effectiveness, but in this modern era we tend to forget that ideally there would exist antibacterials which could be thus developed, that is, with tendencies toward both safety and effectiveness, and which are even relatively inexpensive. Consequently, we tend to demand rigor as well as expense of development even to the point of potentially squandering such utility, were it to exist. In this review I lay out evidence that in phage therapy such potential, in fact, does exist. Advancement of phage therapy unquestionably requires effective regulation as well as rigorous demonstration of efficacy, but after nearly 100 years of clinical practice, perhaps not as much emphasis on strictly laboratory-based proof of principle.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.