CASE REPORT article
Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
This article is part of the Research TopicCase Reports in Pulmonary Medicine 2025View all 24 articles
Bacteriophage-Antibiotic Therapy for Extensively Drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in Critically Ill Patient with Respiratory Infection
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital, National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases, Shenzhen, China
- 2School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Molecular Biology Research Center & Center for Medical Genetics, Changsha, China
- 3The Affiliated Dongguan Songshan Lake Central Hospital, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, China
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Extensively drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (XDR A. baumannii) poses a crucial challenge due to high mortality and limited therapies. Here, we report the successful application of phage-antibiotic synergy in a critically ill patient with two months of ineffective antibiotic treatment. The patient was diagnosed with severe pneumonia due to recurrent infection of XDR A. baumannii, causing severe pulmonary dysfunction. A nebulized phage inhalation combined with intravenous administration of polymyxin B, amikacin, and fosfomycin successfully brought about measurable clinical improvements in 8 days. The clearance of XDR A. baumannii in sputum cultures, coupled with decreased partial pressure of carbon dioxide, substantial absorption of bilateral pulmonary lesions, reduced density of residual infiltrates, and decreased pleural effusion in the patient, collectively confirmed therapeutic efficacy. Our case indicate that bacteriophage-antibiotic therapy is promising to prevent the emergence of resistant mutants and enhance antibacterial efficacy in patient with similar infections.
Keywords: Bacteriophage therapy, Drug Resistance, A. baumannii, respiratory infection, PulmonaryDisease
Received: 30 Sep 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Dai, Zhang, Xu, Zhao, Zhou, Lu and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Pengfei Zhao
Yang Zhou
Hongzhou Lu
Mingbin Zheng
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