Science & technology | The antibiotics crisis

Western firms are becoming interested in a Soviet medicine

“Phage therapy” aims to use viruses to cure bacterial infections

^BT4 bacteriophage.^b Coloured transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of a ^IT4 bacteriophage^i virus. The swollen structure at top is the head, which contains DNA inside a protein coat. Attached to this is the tail, consisting of a tube-like sheath and tail fibres (at bottom). ^IT4 bacteriophages^i are parasites of ^IEscherichia coli^i, a bacteria common in the human gut. The virus attaches itself to the host bacteria cell wall by its tail fibres; the sheath then contracts, injecting the contents of the head (DNA) into the host. The viral DNA makes the bacteria manufacture more copies of the virus. Magnification: x110,000 at 6x4.5cm size. — Image: Science Photo Library

May 3rd 2023|Tbilisi

It was on the golf course that Barry Rud first noticed something was seriously wrong. A trim 60-year-old who played hockey as a young man, he found himself unable to take more than a few steps without gasping for breath. His doctors said he had caught a strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, one of the growing number of “superbugs” that have evolved resistance to many common antibiotics.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Viral therapy”