Bacterial problems are not new to mankind. While there are surely some great benefits of bacteria in the human system, the problematic species can bring some serious menace.
So far, our common approach to dealing with bacterial problems is antibiotics. That’s the widespread method. But that’s not the only one. There’s bacteriophage therapy as well, which offers promising results against problematic bacteria.
It’s also called phage therapy. In this article, we shall discuss that further and draw a comparative analysis of phage therapy vs. antibiotics. Let’s get into it right away.
How Does Phage Therapy Work?
Bacteria or any microorganism works until their physical structure is intact. The moment you break their walls or have them disintegrated is when they lose potency.
Bacteriophages work exactly this way. It’s basically treating bacteria with a virus. The virus is used to burst the bacteria or lyse them, which gets them killed. The virus acts as a foreign body that attaches to the bacteria and inserts its own DNA/RNA into it.
The aim is to stop bacterial multiplication. The virus that’s introduced into the system replicates itself until the bacteria get destroyed and don’t reproduce anymore.
This gives the therapy a significant advantage over antibiotics. Here’s why:
Antibiotics Aren’t Restricted to Just the Problem Bacteria
Antibiotics go out there to hunt any bacteria that come their way.
This is concerning because our body needs good bacteria to function properly. With the good bacteria gone, the body struggles and displays several problems and symptoms before it heals completely.
There are several problems you can experience as side effects of antibiotics:
- Upset Stomach
- Feeling extreme nausea
- Diarrhea
- Yeast infections
When the antibiotic course ends, the body will eventually revert back to the production of good bacteria. But the above-mentioned problem does exist with antibiotics.
Antibiotics Cause Superbugs
One thing with bacteria is that they can become resistant to antibiotic treatment.
Once the resistance is developed, the meds stop working. Plus, this can be harmful as the resistant bacteria can transmit this property to other types of bacteria in the body as well.
This means that you need to be really cautious with antibiotic consumption.
A lot of people self-prescribe the pills and consume them without really knowing the causes of their health problems. For instance, they can use it for viral fever. This makes the bacteria resistant. There are a lot of similar problems with antibiotics.
We’d like to take the opportunity to mention that you shouldn’t take medicines on your own. Always visit a doctor!
Now that you know the disadvantages of antibiotics, let’s move to why phage therapy is better than this:
Benefits of Phage Therapy
There are several benefits of phage therapy. Some of them are mentioned below:
- It works with the specific problem. So if there’s one type of bad bacteria that needs to be eliminated from the system, then phage therapy will address that only.
- Phages work on their own and can stay dormant until their target bacteria pop up again. This means that the resistance to bacteria isn’t a problem.
- This method isn’t harmful to plants or animals. Not even to the environment.
- Phages aren’t harmful to the human body.
Some Disadvantages as Well
There are several disadvantages of phage therapy. Let’s discuss them as well.
- It’s difficult to implement phage therapy. That’s the reason why antibiotics are still the most widespread method to tackle bacterial problems.
- The phages are limited when compared to the types of harmful bacteria that can cause harm.
- Sometimes, phages can become resistant to bacteria too.
Final Words
Phage Therapy is being researched in labs all around the globe. The goal is to find sustainable methods to implement this widely. MBP Inc is proud to be a part of this research happening in labs and research institutions around the globe.
We sell biology products. To get Erlenmeyer Flasks, RNA/DNA extraction kits, and other microbiology-related products, please contact us right away!
