Can A 100-Year-Old Treatment Help Save Us From Superbugs?

Short Wave

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

In 2015, Steffanie Strathdee's husband nearly died from a superbug, an antibiotic resistant bacteria he contracted in Egypt. Desperate to save him, she reached out to the scientific community for help. What she got back? A 100-year-old treatment that's considered experimental in the U.S. Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist, tells us how it works, its limitations, and its potential role in our fight against superbugs. Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.8	In 2015, Stephanie Strathie and her husband Tom Patterson, both scientists, were traveling
0:11.2	in Egypt.
0:12.6	They saw the pyramids, the Nile, and then, as she tells it in this TEDx talk, after dinner
0:17.7	one night.
0:18.7	Tom became violently ill.
0:21.1	He vomited all night long.
0:23.0	And I thought, oh gee, he's just got food poisoning.
0:25.6	And I pulled out a couple of antibiotic pills that we take with us on our trips.
0:29.2	And I gave it to him with some water.
0:31.4	Nothing happened.
0:32.4	The next day, Tom kept vomiting.
0:34.9	Stephanie called a doctor.
0:36.2	He thought, yeah, food poisoning.
0:38.4	And set up an IV drip for more antibiotics.
0:41.2	But Tom only got worse.
0:43.1	At a local clinic, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis, inflammation of the pancreas, and
0:47.6	metabac to a hospital in Frankfurt.
0:50.0	And there, he was diagnosed with something even worse, a super bug, a bacteria by the name
0:57.0	of Asineter Bacter Bomanii.
0:59.8	Scary name.
1:01.2	Scaryer Bacteria.
	...

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