Viruses that slay bacteria draw new interest
By John Travis
For people with a damaged liver or too much iron in their blood, enjoying raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico is a deadly gamble. Most of the oysters harbor Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium responsible for almost all seafood-related deaths in the United States. Healthy people shrug off the microbe, but susceptible folks who get a full-blown infection have more than a 50 percent chance of dying.
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“You can be dead within 24 hours,” says Paul A. Gulig of the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. Seeking a treatment that works faster than antibiotics do, he and his colleagues recently isolated a bacteria-killing virus, or bacteriophage, that targets V. vulnificus and can prevent the deaths of mice infected with it.