Phage therapy: a new therapeutic solution for infected wounds

Background and Aim : Wound infections have been explained as severe conditions especially inhospitals. In addition to extensive tissue damage and nonhealing wounds, septicemia can increasethe mortality rate of wound infections. The most important causative agents of wound infectionsare included: Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, andPseudomonas aeruginosa. Because of high prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria andlimitations to discovery of new effective antibiotics, finding new approaches to combat bacterialinfections has been inevitable recently.Methods : In this study, we reviewed the results of using bacteriophages against wounds MDR(Multi-drug resistant) bacterial infections focusing on experimental assays, animal models andclinical trials. Phages effectiveness in wound healings was surveyed based on previous reports.Results : According to the results, phages have high potential to prevent wound infections byMDR bacteria, faster healing of the infections and removing bacterial biofilms with lower toxicitythan antibiotics. Animal models were used to determine the phages activity against the infections.Using combinational therapy (phage-antibiotic) and phage cocktails were reported as moreefficient methods to control the infections and also reducing the antibiotic resistances. In addition,using new delivery systems could be very helpful in wounds phage therapy.Conclusion : In spite of successful experiments of phage therapy indicating high potential ofbacteriophages to prevent and remove wound infections, more studies are needed to extensivetherapeutic uses of bacteriophages and manufacturing the regularly therapeutic phage-basedproducts.

کلیدواژه ها:

bacteriophages ، multidrug-resistant bacteria ، wound infection