Phage predation, disease severity, and pathogen genetic diversity in cholera patients. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38669570/)

These scientists wanted to understand how bacteria and viruses that infect them, called phages, evolve and affect diseases in patients. They did a big study in Bangladesh for a whole year, looking at patients with diarrheal disease, especially cholera. They used special tools to measure the amount of the cholera bacteria and the phages that attack them in the patients' bodies. They also checked if the patients had taken antibiotics.

They found that certain phages and antibiotics could reduce the number of cholera bacteria in the patients, and this was linked to how sick the patients got. When the bacteria didn't have ways to defend against the phages, the phages were very good at killing them, leading to more diversity among the bacteria. But when the bacteria had defenses against the phages, the phages weren't as effective, and this led to more diversity among the phages instead.

The scientists think that understanding how bacteria and phages evolve together in patients is important for developing treatments and tests for diseases caused by bacteria.

Madi N., Cato ET., Abu Sayeed M., Creasy-Marrazzo A., Cuenod A., Islam K., Khabir MIU., Bhuiyan MTR., Begum YA., Freeman E., Vustepalli A., Brinkley L., Kamat M., Bailey LS., Basso KB., Qadri F., Khan AI., Shapiro BJ., Nelson EJ. Phage predation, disease severity, and pathogen genetic diversity in cholera patients. Science. 2024 Apr 19;384(6693):eadj3166. doi: 10.1126/science.adj3166. Epub 2024 Apr 19.