Steffanie Strathdee: ‘Phages have evolved to become perfect predators of bacteria’
Infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee's husband survived a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection thanks to her suggestion of using an unconventional cure popular in the former Soviet Union: fighting the bug with a virus. Now the global health expert at the University of California, San Diego, she has, along with her husband, Tom Patterson, who is also a scientist at the institution, written an account of their nine month ordeal - The Perfect Predator: A Scientists's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug.
What was the superbug your husband got, and how did he contract it?
It is called Acinetobacter baumannii but nicknamed Iraqibacter because many wounded service members who have returned from the Middle East were infected with it. It was once a wimpy bacteria - mundane and harmless - but its superpower is its ability to acquire antibiotic-resistant genes. It now tops the World Health Organization's list of the 12 mostly deadly superbugs to human health. It has infiltrated clinics and hospitals all around the world and sticks to hospital linens. Tom likely picked it up in Egypt while we were vacationing there in late 2015 - sequencing later showed it was an Egyptian strain. He came down in Egypt with what turned out to be acute pancreatitis, caused by a gallstone blocking his bile duct. He could have got [the superbug] from the Egyptian clinic we got him to. It could also have come from the swirling red dust we were exposed to while exploring pyramids - the pathogen is also found in soil. We really don't know. But the football-sized cyst that formed in his abdomen as a complication of the gallstone provided a nice little apartment for the superbug to settle in and fester.