Clinical studies of the use of bacteriophage in the treatment of cholera.

This study reports the use of bacteriophage prepared in the USSR in the treatment of cholera. Patients with acute cholera were rehydrated with a standard intravenous solution and were then given a bacteriophage preparation in addition to maintenance intravenous therapy. The titre of the phage preparations was between 10(8) and 10(9) pfu/ml. Bacteriophage was given by mouth (25 ml for adults and 20 ml for children) for 3 days; in addition, some patients were also given an intramuscular injection (20 ml) of phage on the first day in hospital. For comparison, other groups of patients were given a standard tetracycline regimen or a placebo preparation. Daily vibrio and phage counts were made on stool samples from all patients and the vibrio strains isolated from each patient were tested for sensitivity to the phage preparation.The criteria used to evaluate the various therapies were duration of diarrhoea, volume of stool, and duration of vibrio excretion.The results of the study demonstrate that, in the doses used, the therapeutic effect of bacteriophage, if any, was markedly inferior to that of tetracycline and that in the current state of our knowledge bacteriophage, as used in this study, has no place in the treatment of cholera.