In November 2015, infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, evolutionary psychologist Tom Patterson, were spending the week of Thanksgiving exploring pyramids and pharaoh’s tombs in Egypt when Patterson came down with what seemed like a nasty bout of food poisoning aboard their cruise ship. But as his condition rapidly deteriorated and he had to be emergency medevac’d, first to Germany and then to the medical center at UC San Diego, where both scientists were on staff, blood and imaging tests revealed why Patterson’s body was failing. A soccer-ball-sized cyst in his abdomen was infected—teeming with one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.
Image: Bacteriophages escaping from a dying bacterial cell. The idea to make these bacteria-preying viruses into medicines began nearly a century ago in the former Soviet Union. The US is just now starting to seriously evaluate phage therapy as a treatment for drug-resistant infections. DENNIS KUNKEL/SCIENCE SOURCE
