How One Woman Saved Her Husband From a Superbug

I just read the most amazing story of a loving wife who saved her husband's life through grit and determination and persuasion, and I have to share it with you because it could save other lives. We hear about superbugs all the time in the news, those bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. This story offers hope for the millions around the world that may need to deal with this in the future.

Steffanie Strathdee's husband was desperately ill from a bacterial infection that antibiotics could not kill, and the doctors told her he would die. However, she refused to give up. She worked as an infectious disease epidemiologist, so she put her knowledge to work and began research to find some kind of treatment. She discovered that phages are viruses that naturally eat bacteria. However, it was a treatment theory that was given up on over 100 years ago once antibiotics became popular. So she contacted phage scientists all over the country, begging them to help her find a few phages that would eat the specific bacteria that was killing her husband.

“Phages are everywhere. There’s 10 million trillion trillion – that’s 10 to the power of 31 – phages that are thought to be on the planet,” Strathdee said. “They’re in soil, they’re in water, in our oceans and in our bodies, where they are the gatekeepers that keep our bacterial numbers in check. But you have to find the right phage to kill the bacterium that is causing the trouble.”

Miraculously, the scientists dropped everything and searched for the few that could help her husband and found them! They were able to also purify the cocktail so that it could be injected into a human being without killing him.

Next, this amazing woman contacted the FDA and convinced them to approve this unconventional treatment, which was a long, time-consuming process. Unbelievably, she got the necessary approval and in JUST THREE WEEKS the phage cocktail was injected into her husband, and HE LIVED!

Strathdee wrote about this experience to help others get this treatment if they are facing a similar problem, and she has now opened a Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) to help patients infected with superbugs.