Competition “Bio/Mol/Text”-2020/2021
This work was published in the nomination “Visually about the beloved” of the competition “Bio/Mol/Text”-2020/2021.
The general partner of the competition is the annual biotechnology conference BiotechClub, organized by the international innovative biotechnology company BIOCAD.
The sponsor of the competition is SkyGen: a leading distributor of life science products on the Russian market.
Competition sponsor: the largest supplier of equipment, reagents and consumables for biological research and production.
"Book" sponsor of the competition - "Alpina Non-Fiction"
Prevention of furunculosis
Ways to prevent the disease include:
- keeping skin clean by washing regularly;
- immediate disinfection of all skin wounds, cuts and abrasions, even the smallest ones;
- Cover any cuts with a sterile dressing to prevent infection.
Eating a healthy, balanced diet and regular exercise will improve your overall health and immune system, reducing the risk of developing not only furunculosis, but all diseases in general.
Seeing a doctor in a timely manner will help maintain your health.
Don't delay treatment, call right now. We work around the clock. tel. (24 hours a day)
A little about VR
There is a part in the video where VR work is presented. To better understand what is where, please read the description below:
- For ease of viewing the internal processes occurring in a bacterial cell, the cell wall and cytoplasmic membrane are made transparent.
- In the virus reproduction cycle, one type of bacteriophage is considered. This is staphylococcal bacteriophage 80α (alpha).
- The processes of replication, translation and transcription are simplified, and for a better visualization of these processes they are slightly separated in space.
Causes of furunculosis
The staphylococcus bacteria that cause the infection live on the skin, concentrating in parts of the body where folds are present (furunculosis on the face, in particular furunculosis of the nose and furunculosis of the lips, are the most common places where the disease manifests itself). Usually the immune system keeps them under control, but when the immune system is weakened, they enter the skin through a hair follicle or a cut or scrape in the skin. Furunculosis can be triggered by simple trauma to the skin or scratching it. Boils are often the result of failure to comply with basic personal hygiene standards. When the skin becomes infected, the immune system responds by sending white blood cells to the affected area to destroy the bacteria. Pus is a collection of dead bacteria, dead white blood cells, and dead skin.
The following conditions increase the risk of developing cutaneous furunculosis:
- Diabetes: High levels of sugar or glucose in the blood can reduce the immune system's ability to respond to infection.
- Medications: Some medications weaken the immune system.
- HIV and other diseases that attack the immune system.
- Skin diseases: psoriasis, eczema and acne.
- Excess body weight also increases the risk.
Furunculosis itself is not contagious through contact, but if the immune system is weakened, the infection can sometimes spread when people share the same space or materials, such as clothing and foot spas.
Staphylococcus aureus
Staphylococci are gram-positive and non-spore-forming cocci that form pairs, short chains or clusters. The genus Staphylococcus contains many species that are separated from each other based on the production of the enzyme coagulase [1].
Staphylococcus aureus (Staphylococcus aureus) is a coagulase-positive species and is one of the most virulent species.
Virulence (from Latin virulentus - “poisonous”) the degree of ability of an infectious agent (strain of microorganism or virus) to cause disease or death of the body.
Staphylococcus aureus is an often harmless inhabitant of the epithelium of human skin and mucous membranes, but is also associated with serious systemic and local infections [2] and is one of the most common causes of foodborne infections worldwide. S. aureus produces 15 enterotoxins.
Enterotoxins are bacterial toxins that cause the secretion of fluid from intestinal cells.
Fighting Staphylococcus aureus
The fight against bacteria has been going on for a long time. People have tried to treat wounds with plants. And by trial and error, the necessary antimicrobial drugs were selected [3].
However, the real fight against bacteria began with the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928. And already in 1929, Fleming’s article was published in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology. Although penicillin had already been “discovered” several times before Fleming, scientists of that time only wrote reports, took notes, but did not publish the results in scientific journals [4]. The open mushroom killed staphylo- and streptococci and even diphtheria bacillus [5].
Already in 1940, the first information about bacterial resistance to penicillin appeared.
Symptoms of furunculosis
Boils are red, swollen, and painful nodules of varying sizes. The larger they become, the more painful the sensation. The surrounding skin is usually red and inflamed. The nodules quickly fill with pus and may burst at the last stage of furunculosis. If several adjacent follicles are infected, they may grow together and form a larger nodule called a carbuncle. A carbuncle is a collection of boils.
Fever and swollen lymph nodes with furunculosis are rare, but possible.
Boils and carbuncles usually affect the thighs, armpits, buttocks, face and neck. They occur in areas prone to hair formation, sweat and friction.
Bacteriophage
In 1919, even before the discovery of penicillin, Felix D'Herelle discovered a completely different method of combating bacteria. But then he was never able to compete with antibiotics. We are talking about bacteriophage therapy.
Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that use only prokaryotic cells to reproduce. These viruses are found everywhere in nature [6]. S. aureus was one of the first organisms used to demonstrate the existence of a bacteriophage [2].
In the 1920s–1940s, many studies were carried out on the clinical use of bacteriophages, but no consistent results were obtained. In the West, they began to abandon bacteriophage therapy [7].
The fight between Staphylococcus aureus and bacteriophage
Now phage preparations are mixtures of several bacteriophages. We will focus on one of the staphylococcal phages.
Phage 80α is a temperate lambda bacteriophage of the family Siphoviridae with a double-stranded DNA genome. 80α is capable of generalized transduction and may also act as a facilitator for the mobilization of SaPI pathogenicity islands [2], which have been shown to encode virulence factors such as toxic shock syndrome toxins and coagulase [1].
Like other bacteriophages, the 80α capsid assembles as an empty precursor, the procapsid. Handfuls of phage DNA are packaged into procapsids through the portal apex in an ATP-dependent process that requires small and large subunits of the terminase enzyme. DNA packaging is accompanied by expansion of the capsid and structural rearrangement of the shell.
For bacteriophage therapy, it is recommended to use those bacteriophages that follow the lytic path of development (with cell rupture).
Bacteriophage preparations
Now, with the development of modern methods of genetic engineering and molecular biology, bacteriophage therapy is coming to life in new research. And at the moment, bacteriophage therapy is used very carefully and strictly controlled, in order to avoid repeating the story with antibiotics.
However, such strict standards are not observed everywhere. In Western Europe, after the discovery of antibiotics, the use of bacteriophages was quickly abandoned. In Eastern Europe, despite the lack of large and well-controlled clinical trials, they remained a relatively popular treatment into the 20th century [8].
In the USSR, the study of bacteriophages continued. This led to the accumulation of a large collection of them in the countries of the post-Soviet space. Now, when Western countries are just beginning to take a closer look at bacteriophage therapy for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus and prescribe them to a sick person in rare cases under the strict supervision of a doctor [9], in Russia bacteriophages are used quite actively as a medicine. And they can prescribe such drugs “lightly” despite the fact that their effectiveness has not been proven [10–16]: most Russian studies of bacteriophages are limited to 30–40 participants - such studies are not evidence-based. Unfortunately, such careless use of drugs can lead to an increase in bacterial resistance.
It is very important to treat bacteriophages with extreme caution. Otherwise, we will soon see the news “Bacteria are resistant to bacteriophage therapy.”
Possibilities of using bacteriophages in the treatment of infectious diseases of the ENT organs in children
NIKIFOROVA G.N.
., Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor,
PSHONKINA
D.M.
Department of Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases, First Moscow State Medical University named after. THEM. Sechenov Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow Less than a century of history of the use of antibacterial drugs in the treatment of infectious and inflammatory diseases has demonstrated the wide possibilities for adaptation of many strains of microorganisms to the toxic effects of these drugs.
Over the past decades, the resistance of infectious agents to antimicrobial drugs widely used in otorhinolaryngology has increased significantly. In childhood, the incidence of diseases of the ENT organs is higher than in adults, while at the same time, viral diseases in children are often complicated by the development of bacterial processes, which leads to the search for new methods of etiotropic therapy. An analysis of the literature above shows the validity of the use of phage therapy in the treatment of diseases of the ENT organs in children, both locally and systemically, including in combination with traditional antibacterial therapy. The advantage of therapeutic bacteriophages is their high specificity for certain microorganisms, good compatibility with other drugs, minimal risk of adverse events and the absence of allergic reactions. In childhood, the frequency of infectious and inflammatory diseases of the upper respiratory tract and ear is much higher than in adults, which is determined by a number of anatomical features, as well as the imperfection of the child’s immune system.
The significant prevalence of ENT diseases in childhood often correlates with the development of severe and numerous complications. The vast majority of infectious processes of the ENT organs in children have a viral etiology; in 25–30% of acute diseases of the respiratory tract, viral-bacterial associations are detected [6]. It is no secret that viral infections in children quite often cause the development of bacterial processes in the ENT organs - rhinosinusitis, tonsillopharyngitis, otitis, etc. Etiologically significant pathogens in most of the above clinical cases are Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pyogenes Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, Arcanobacterium haemolyticum, Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis
and some other microorganisms [4, 5, 13]. Diseases of the paranasal sinuses are the most common complications of respiratory viral infections, however, tonsillopharyngitis and otitis media are of no less clinical importance due to the high risk of developing chronic processes. Otitis media in childhood develops much more often than in adult patients. For example, by the age of 3, 83% of children experience at least one episode of acute otitis media, and 46% are diagnosed with 3 or more cases of this disease [14].
Adequate etiotropic therapy of bacterial infections of the ENT organs is an urgent problem of modern clinical medicine. The use of antibacterial drugs in the treatment of infectious and inflammatory diseases over the years has led to the development of adaptation of a significant number of strains of microorganisms to the toxic effects of drugs. The process of pathogen resistance is also facilitated by the conditions provided by nature for the exchange of various genetic elements between bacteria. Also among the factors contributing to the growth of resistance of microorganisms, it should be noted the uncontrolled use of antibiotics, patients’ independent reduction of treatment periods, and the use of low doses of drugs. Since the eighties of the twentieth century, there has been a significant increase in the resistance of microorganisms to many antibacterial drugs, including macrolides and β-lactams, traditionally widely used in otorhinolaryngology. Recently, there has been a sharp increase in the number of bacterial strains producing β-lactamases, which, according to the literature, may be due to the widespread use of different generations of cephalosporins in inpatient and outpatient practice [12]. It is very important to consider that the use of antibacterial drugs in any case has a damaging effect not only on pathogenic, but also on the normal microflora of the human body, thereby increasing the risk of subsequent colonization by pathogenic microflora. Considering the above, the relevance of choosing rational etiotropic topical therapy for bacterial infections in childhood is beyond doubt. Bacteriophages have good prospects in this aspect.
Bacteriophages were discovered by Canadian microbiologist Felix D'Herelle in 1917 while observing the effect of bacterial lysis [11]. Before him, other researchers had encountered similar phenomena (N.F. Gamaleya, 1898; F. Twort, 1915), but it was F. D'Herelle who not only suggested the viral etiology of bacterial death, but also managed to isolate the lytic factor. The discovered viruses were called bacteriophages and began to be used in the treatment of infectious diseases. However, with the advent of the “era of antibiotics,” phage therapy was undeservedly forgotten. At present, when antibiotic resistance of pathogenic microorganisms is increasing everywhere and the effectiveness of etiotropic treatment is steadily decreasing, the interest of clinical medicine in bacteriophages has again increased markedly.
Bacteriophages are the most numerous, widespread in the biosphere and, presumably, the most evolutionarily ancient group of viruses. Scientists have calculated that 1024 bacteria can be infected by bacteriophages in 1 second [15]. One of the areas of application of bacteriophages is antimicrobial treatment, an alternative to antibacterial drugs.
Due to their high safety and reactogenicity, bacteriophages are approved for use in pediatrics without age restrictions (including premature infants) [1, 3, 7]. The use of bacteriophage preparations stimulates the activation of specific and nonspecific immunity factors, therefore phage therapy is especially effective in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases against the background of immunosuppressive conditions [8, 16]. In August 2009 The Nestle Nutrition Corporation (Switzerland) in Bangladesh initiated clinical studies of the use of Escherichia coli bacteriophage in the treatment of intestinal infections in children aged 6 to 60 months, the results of which demonstrated good tolerability and high efficiency of this treatment method [17]. Another study in children with acute purulent rhinosinusitis showed a positive effect of bacteriophages on mucociliary clearance, an important universal mechanism for protecting the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract. This allows us to classify bacteriophages not only as etiological, but also as pathogenetic agents for the treatment of purulent-inflammatory diseases of the ENT organs [10]. Based on the results of clinical studies, data were also obtained on the positive effect of phage therapy on the clinical manifestations of chronic tonsillitis and the inoculation of Staphylococcus aureus from the surface of the palatine tonsils [9].
Currently, the Russian medical industry produces various bacteriophage preparations to combat infectious diseases caused by a significant range of pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria [18].
In most clinical cases, bacteriophages are prescribed for oral administration, but this is not the only way to use them. To treat and prevent diseases of the ENT organs, you can instill the drug into the nasal cavity, rinse, rinse and irrigate the tonsils with it, and insert turundas with a medicinal solution into the ear canal. Currently, the following bacteriophages are used: staphylococcal, streptococcal, dysenteric polyvalent, klebsiella, pyobacteriophage and others. Pyobacteriophage polyvalent - Sextaphage (FSUE NPO "Microgen" of the Ministry of Health of Russia) is capable of specifically destroying the most significant pathogens of diseases of the ENT organs, in particular staphylococci, streptococci and other microorganisms. In connection with the above properties, indications for the use of this drug are purulent-inflammatory diseases of the upper respiratory tract and ear, as well as their complications - phlegmon and abscesses. According to the manufacturer's instructions, the drug can be used topically - in the form of rinses, irrigations, applications; for insertion into the paranasal sinuses, middle ear cavity, and rinsing the abscess cavity. For intracavitary administration for infections of the ENT organs, it is recommended to use from 2.0 to 20.0 ml 1 to 3 times a day. The duration of treatment with polyvalent pyobacteriophage ranges from 5 to 15 days. There is data on the anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory properties of the drug pyobacteriophage polyvalent (Sextaphage) [2]. Analysis of the history, mechanism of action and use of bacteriophages in medicine allows us to say with confidence that the advantage of this method of treatment is the ability of viral agents to infect both sensitive and polyantibiotic-resistant microbial cells. An important feature of phage therapy in comparison with etiotropic chemotherapy is the absence of the risk of the spread of pathogenic agents resistant to therapy in the population and the negative impact on normal microflora. Features of bacteriophages that give an advantage over other methods of treatment are also their high specificity for certain microorganisms, good compatibility with other drugs, and the absence of allergic reactions and other undesirable effects.
Thus, phage therapy is an effective and safe treatment method and can be used in the treatment of inflammatory diseases of the ENT organs of bacterial etiology, including in childhood.
LITERATURE
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Source:
Medical Council, No. 6, 2015
