Data from: Targeting antibiotic resistant bacteria with phages reduces bacterial density in an insect host

Phage therapy is attracting growing interest among clinicians as
antibiotic resistance continues becoming harder to control. However,
clinical trials and animal model studies on bacteriophage treatment are
still scarce and results on the efficacy vary. Recent research suggests
that using traditional antimicrobials in concert with phage could have
desirable synergistic effects that hinder the evolution of resistance.
Here, we present a novel insect gut model to study phage-antibiotic
interaction in a system where antibiotic resistance initially exists in
very low frequency and phage specifically targets the resistance bearing
cells. We demonstrate that while phage therapy could not reduce the
frequency of target bacteria in the population during positive selection
by antibiotics, it alleviated the antibiotic induced blooming by lowering
the overall load of resistant cells. The highly structured gut environment
had pharmacokinetic effects on both phage and antibiotic dynamics compared
to in vitro: antibiotics did not reduce the overall amount of bacteria,
demonstrating a simple turnover of gut flora from non-resistant to
resistant population with little cost. The results imply moderate
potential for using phage as an aid to target antibiotic resistant gut
infections, and question the usefulness of in vitro inferences.