From Bacteriophage to Antibiotics and Back

Jasminka Talapko, Ivana Škrlec, Tamara Alebić, Sanja Bekić, Aleksandar Včev

Abstract


Life is a phenomenon, and evolution has given it countless forms and possibilities of survival and formation. Today, almost all relationship mechanisms between humans who are at the top of the ladder, and microorganisms which are the beginning are known. Preserving health, or life, is not just an instinctive response to threat anymore; rather it is a deliberate creation and use of knowledge. During major epidemics and wars which create great suffering, experiences of the man-disease (cause) relationships have been applied, so we note the use of bacteriophages in Poland and Russia before the Second World War and during the Second World War, while almost at the same time antibiotic therapy was introduced. Since bacteriophages - viruses "tracked" the evolution of bacteria, the mechanism of their action lies in the prokaryotic cell, so they are not dangerous to the eukaryotic cells of human parenchyma. It was, therefore, necessary only to reuse these experiences nowadays when we are convinced that bacteria have an inexhaustible genetic and phenotypic resistance mechanism of their own. Antibiotics continue to represent the foundation of health preservation, but now they work together with specific viruses – bacteriophages that we can produce and apply in the context of multi-resistance, but also for the preparation of new pharmacological preparations. Therefore, let us turn to this new knowledge and possibilities, and add "all the way to the new antibiotic-bacteriophage model" to the title of this paper.


Keywords*


antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, bacteriophage, historical overview

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