VIRUS TREATMENT IS SENT TO ME IN THE POST

ANDY HARPER, a 47-year-old businessman from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, says his cystic fibrosis has dramatically improved thanks to phage therapy.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition characterised by a build-up of sticky mucus in the lungs that cannot be cleared — this provides a breeding ground for bacteria: a particular concern is infection with antibiotic resistant strains of pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, which can be life-threatening.

Andy contracted pseudomonas in hospital 13 years ago and has had it ever since.

‘The irony is that if it was the normal pseudomonas you find in soil it would probably be treatable,’ he says, ‘but because it is a strain that’s been living in a hospital for the past 30 years, it’s difficult to treat.’

Previously, he’s spent up to two weeks in hospital undergoing regular intravenous antibiotic infusions to try to keep the bacteria at bay. But for the past four years Andy, who is married with no children, has been having treatment from the Eliava Institute phage therapy treatment centre in Tiblisi, Georgia, a publicprivate partnership.

He sends the clinic sputum samples by post every couple of months. The strains of infection-causing bacteria are analysed and phages to kill them are identified and sent back to him.

‘I originally heard a programme about phage research in Georgia on Radio 4 and decided to get in touch with them,’ he says.

‘They analyse the infection and send back four or five different phages in glass vials which I inhale in a saline solution two to three times a day for two weeks, though sometimes I am directed to drink them in a solution.

‘The first time I got the phages, my chest cleared up within two weeks and I was running around on a squash court again like a maniac.’

Andy says he has not been to

hospital since he began the treatment: ‘My GP has been an excellent support for my phage therapy.’

The cost however, is high: Andy pays £400 to £500 a time, but has decided that the treatment is so effective he can stretch to having it up to eight times a year at a cost of up to £4,000.

The Cystic Fibrosis Trust said that although it is helping to fund research into phages, it does not recommend unregulated procedures.