A horrible persisting infection in a cat's leg following a compound fracture has been successfully treated using cutting-edge experimental medicine: personalized bacteriophage therapy. Wondrously, this is a rare case of animal therapy being based on treatment of humans beforehand, the team says. We were the guinea pigs.
Well, we owe them. This is the first time this experimental technique has been reported in academic veterinary medicine, say the scientists involved in the groundbreaking procedure. Bacteriophages are viruses that target and kill bacteria.
They tend to be highly species-specific. A phage won't parasitize just any bacterium. "Personalized" medicine in this case isn't tailored to the patient but to the pathogen: getting the right phage to decimate the offending bacteria in whatever patient.
The personalized treatment of Squeaks the cat was reported in the paper "Successful phage-antibiotic therapy of P. aeruginosa implant-associated infection in a Siamese cat" in Veterinary Quarterly , by Prof. Ronen Hazan of the Faculty of Dental Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his team, with lead author Ron Braunstein and colleagues.
Our story starts with 5-year-old Squeaks falling out of a window one day and dropping three stories (what vets call "high-rise trauma"). Some cats survive high falls with no problems , but three stories is exactly the wrong height for that. Squeaks suffered multiple fractures in both hind legs and was treated at the Vet Holim me.
