Browsing by Subject "faagihoito"

Antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections are a silently spreading pandemic that endangers public health and the healthcare system globally. Common infections may become more life-threatening, and hospital-acquired multi-drug-resistant infections soon compromise all medical procedures, such as surgeries and chemotherapy treatments. Two major players affecting the effectiveness of antimicrobial therapy against polymicrobial infections are interactions between bacterial species and biofilm formation. Bioiflm-embedded cells are protected from various threats, such as the host immune system and antibiotic interventions in the commensal polymicrobial community of increased virulence. Given the increasingly limited options of antibiotics against biofilm-associated antimicrobial-resistant infections, novel therapeutic strategies are needed. Phage therapy has regained interest as a promising strategy for treating antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and limiting the evolution of resistance. In particular, phage-antibiotic combination therapy has been shown to be more efficient in treating pathogenic bacteria than using either one alone. In this study, I aimed to find a phage-antibiotic combination therapy against the formation of single and dual-species biofilm of S. aureus and P. aeruginosa and demonstrate the therapeutic potential of phages in combination with antibiotics by using a simple but clinically relevant in vitro biofilm model that supports the concomitant growth of P. aeruginosa and S. aureus. I found out that using phage Stab21 with ciprofloxacin or vancomycin alone or in combination was more effective in preventing the biofilm formation of S. aureus than using phage or antibiotic therapy alone. This was observed in the single-species biofilm of S. aureus and the dual-species biofilm in coculture with P. aeruginosa. Even though Stab21 alone could not infect S. aureus in liquid culture, adding ciprofloxacin or vancomycin at sublethal concentrations increased phage production.