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Retrospect and prospect of bacteriophage therapy

ZHONG Hui-juan1, ZHANG Cheng-yuan1, LIN Zhong-jing1, ZHANG Jin-yuan1, WANG Yan-chun2, CUI Ze-lin2   

  1. 1.Grade 2009 of the 8-year medical education program, 2.Department of Medical Microbiology and Parasitology, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China
  • Online:2013-11-28 Published:2013-12-03
  • Supported by:

    Doctoral Innovation Foundation of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, BXJ201201

Abstract:

There has been nearly one hundred years of using bacteriophages to treat infectious disease. However, with the discovery of antibiotics and their production in industry and wide usage, bacteriophages were ignored as an approach of controlling infectious diseases in the western world, even though there were  lots of work continuously being done in the former Soviet Union countries. But their achievements were basically unknown by the people because the modern world was led by the western world. With the widespread of antibiotic resistant bacteria worldwide, the phage therapy was refocused on to deal with this challenge. In this paper, we reviewed the discovery to bacteriophage, the classification of bacteriophage preparation, the application of bacteriophage in the treatment of infectious diseases as well as their usage in the environmental, food, and agriculture disinfection recent years.

Key words: bacteriophage, bacteria, antibiotic resistance, disinfection