The world is going through one of the scariest pandemic of all time or at least the biggest of this generation. COVID-19 is caused by corona virus which has genetic relatedness to SARS and MERS. The initial start of this viral infection was found in Wuhan, a city in central China and it develops into a epidemic in no time within mainland China. Though travel restrictions and quarantine was observed around the world or at least in few Asian countries, the virus is found to spread globally at a rapid speed. WHO has announced it as a ‘PANDEMIC’ and it can only be controlled by strict actions and collaborations from countries.
There is no known vaccine or medicine is available to treat COVID-19 (but clinical trials are underway in China and USA). The only root of treatment is through active immune system or developing immune to this virus. At this point there are four possibilities that can occur; first, the pandemic situation will run-off as the temperature increases (depends on the seasonal weather); secondly, the virus will infect 80% of the global population and develops immune to virus, therefore, no infection (this scenario is very dangerous due to fatality); third, new vaccines to reduce the risk of infection (it takes almost one year to reach global need); fourth, using medicines to cure the infected population (this is very possible within few weeks or months). But there is no clear strategy on how to treat this viral infection?
PHAGE THERAPY: It is a viral infection which causes pneumonia or infections in upper/lower respiratory tract. During the course of treatment (with antibiotics) there are potential secondary bacterial infections caused by Klebsiella, etc. Taking the global scenario, when majority of the population are infected and treated with antibiotics there is a risk of developing resistance, we all the know the problem of antibiotic resistance recently. To avoid the developing resistance, it is possible to treat the patients with phage therapy or combination of antibiotic-phage. Recent studies showed that the phages can be used to treat respiratory tract infections when inhaled. It should be carefully handled because the developing antibiotic resistance will lead to another global pandemic due to bacterial infections.
Written by Dr Prasanth Manohar
PHAGElogist 