Eli5 what are phages (the medical alternative to antibiotics) and how do they work?
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Phage is short for bacteriophage. A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacterial cells but not cells of multicellular organisms. In other words, if you have a bacterial infection, bacteriophages can kill the bacterial infection without making you sick. One of the advantages of phage therapy is that they can bypass antiobiotic resistance and kill infections caused by organisms that are resistant to antiobotics. They also typically don’t cause the common unpleasant side effects of antibiotics.
The downsides are that bacteriophages are very specific, so you need the exact right bacteriophage to target the specific bacteria infecting you, as opposed to some antibiotics which can kill a wide variety of bacteria. They’re also difficult to make in sufficient quantities for widespread use, they can take longer to work than antibiotics, and while they can’t make you sick directly, they might still trigger an undesirable immune response.
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