Term pertaining to phage therapy describing the means by which adequate therapeutic phage titers are achieved, which in this case is both due to and dependent on active in situ phage population growth over the course of antibacterial treatment.
FOR MORE ON PHAGE THERAPY, GO TO PHAGE-THERAPY.ORG
Also described as active phage therapy, active treatment more or less by definition means that the number of phages added to bacteria is insufficient alone to result in complete destruction of a bacterial culture. Active treatment also can be less explicit in considering the means or potential for phage penetration to target bacterial populations or into bacterial biofilms, which can also involve active phage replication (I use the term "active penetration" to describe this latter process). In either case, by definition the process of active treatment is not accessible to phages that can kill bacteria but not themselves replicate.
Active treatment is dependent on infections being both lytic and productive. Active treatment is also dependent on there being (1) bacterial hosts present in sufficient densities to support phage population growth in situ, (2) sufficiently rapid phage population growth, and (3) phage population growth to sufficient densities to result in destruction of the bacterial population. Similarly, sufficiently large phage burst sizes, sufficiently rapid phage adsorption, and sufficiently short phage latent periods are also relevant to successful active treatment. Contrast passive treatment.
From Gill and Young (2011), p. 401: "A model of phage therapy characterized by lower initial phage dosages, requiring active replication of the phage at the site of infection to generate enough phage to eradicate the bacterial population. In contrast to inundative therapy."
I provide substantial discussion of the concept of active phage therapy as well as additional references here: Abedon, S. T. and C. Thomas-Abedon. 2010. Phage therapy pharmacology. Curr.Pharm.Biotechnol. 11:28-47. [PubMed] (click on link to publisher page, i.e., Bentham Direct, then click "View", and then click on "Full Text"; finally, click on "Download")
For more on this topic, see Wikipedia, Google, and PubMed. Contact web master. Return to terms.
