Treatment Of Cholera Using Bacteriophages
The residents of the town will have to drink the water once as on single bacterium cell can produces many new bacteriophages that starts to inject acids immediately. The process takes no time because after the absorption to the bacterial surface occurs, the process will immediately start. If one bacterium can produce huge amounts of new bacteriophages, the person does not have to drink it again as the process is already occurring in their body.
The treatment would stay in effect until the entire bacterial surface is absorbed. If there is no more bacterial surface for the phages to produce from, then it will obviously not be in effect. I’m guessing the treatment will most likely decrease in effectiveness or stay the same because our body will reject any non-similar bodies. For example, many organ donors’ organs are rejected from the receiver’s body as it sees it’s not theirs. Therefore, due to our body’s restrictions, it may turn out be much less effective over time.
I believe bacteria’s and viruses will evolve indefinitely because many organisms such as viruses all go through natural selection. For example, viruses can evolve indefinitely because when they attach to a host cell, they swap genetic material which may form new viruses to add to the evolution. Drug resistance could also be a way that bacteria’s and viruses evolve. HIV is an example of a virus that had evolved in drug resistance. Bacteria can divide very fast which means they have the ability to adapt, which can make bacteria evolve forever, thus, bacteria and viruses in my opinion will evolve indefinitely.
In theory, the villagers should not be concerned about the phages entering their intestines because the phage is so powerful that it can eliminate all bacteria. The phages are realistically safe because they cannot affect human cells. Therefore, villagers should not be concerned about the phage damaging their cells as it is very safe and may even assist you rather than being an enemy.
In my opinion, eliminating too many cholera bacteria’s in a short term may be dangerous as the body is already dehydrated from the disease’s effects, making it severely weak. It is very dangerous as there is already all this damage and your adding more consistent jobs on top, which could impact the intestines heavily. Therefore, it is dangerous to kill a lot of bacteria in a short amount of time6. The villagers should not be concerned about the bacteriophages infecting other cells because the bacteriophage is specific to a certain bacterium. This only may occur if the bacterial cell has certain traits that are similar to the specific bacteriophage.
If the bacteria adapted a lysogenic cycle, there would be much quicker improvements because more phages are being produced to fight off the cholera bacteria. After the bacteriophages fights off the supply of cholera bacteria in the intestines, it will die in the intestines as there are no bacteria left to fight off. Some risks of phage therapy are that the virus and bacteria will evolve and become more resistant to the phage over time. This can cause some new problems to arise. Some consequences in this situation for the next bacteria is that it will make more cholera bacteria’s in the intestines and will make the symptoms more prone to happen in a short period of time. The next human will be heavily impacted in this situation as he will get more sick and possibly die.
Given the information from the article, I would still subject myself to treatment of cholera with phage therapy. The symptoms may be very harsh, but there would realistically be a chance for the symptoms to get better in the future. Phage therapy is a very safe and effective treatment.
