Reassessment of Historical Clinical Trials Supports the Effectiveness of Phage Therapy

Phage therapy has become a hot topic in medical research due to the increasing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. In the treatment of bacterial infections, bacteriophages have several advantages over antibiotics, including strain specificity, lack of serious side effects, and low development costs. However, scientists dismissed the clinical success of early clinical trials in the 1940s, slowing the adoption of this promising antibacterial application in Western countries. The current study used statistical methods commonly used in modern meta-analysis to reevaluate early 20th-century studies and compare them with clinical trials conducted in the last 20 years. Using a random effect model, the development of disease after treatment with or without phages was measured in odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Based on the findings of 17 clinical trials conducted between 1921 and 1940, phage therapy was effective (OR = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.10 to 0.44, value