Using 'fire to fight fire' to combat disease could make it worse, tests show

试验表明，“以毒攻毒”可能会使疾病恶化

A treatment billed as a potential breakthrough in the fight against disease, including cancer, could back-fire and make the disease fitter and more damaging, new research has found.
最新研究发现，一种潜在的被视为能治疗包括癌症等疾病的突破性疗法可能会回火，使疾病更能发展，更有破坏性。
Ground-breaking research has found that introducing 'friendlier' less-potent strains into a population of disease-causing microbes can lead to increased disease severity.
最新研究发现在致病菌中引入“友好的”效力温和的菌株会使疾病恶化。
The surprise findings by a team of scientists at the University of Exeter has led to calls for urgent research into the implications of using 'fire to fight fire' to combat disease. The research shows that far from being a 'silver bullet' to weaken disease, the practice of introducing pacifist microbes into a host could make the aggressive pathogen stronger, which could hamper disease management.
Exeter大学的研究团队的这一惊人发现使研究“以毒攻毒”疗法的作用变得急迫。这一研究表明向向宿主引入温和微生物的治疗实践远非削弱疾病的“银色子弹”，其可能会使攻击性的致病菌更强，这将妨碍疾病的治疗。
Until now, introducing friendlier cousins, which do not cause severe disease, into a population of pathogens has been shown to reduce disease severity and damage to the infected host. It has been suggested that this approach could be an effective way of treating cancer, and research so far has proved effective and promising. For example, scientists have already produced encouraging results in the fight against Clostridium difficile infections that are so common in our hospitals.
直至现在，向致病菌群中引入其不致病的友好的表亲，可以降低疾病的严重性和对病人的破坏性。这一疗法被视为有效的癌症疗法，现有的研究都证明其有效、有希望。例如，科学家在将这一疗法应用于医院中常见的难辨梭状芽孢杆菌感染获得了激动人心的成果。
But the University of Exeter scientists tested this strategy using a plant pathogen, and found the therapy could go dramatically wrong, with devastating consequences for the host plant.
但是，Exeter大学的科学家们用植物病原体来检验这一策略，发现这一疗法可能极端错误，会给带病植物带来毁灭性的结果。
A team lead by Professors Ivana Gudelj, a mathematical biologist and Nick Talbot, a plant disease specialist, investigated the devastating rice blast disease. They introduced a mixed population of the fungus that causes this disease into rice, where the mixture included an aggressive strain and a pacifist mutant. They expected that the overall disease severity would decrease because of the presence of the pacifist strain. However, they found the opposite. The rice plants succumbed to much more severe disease.
数理生物学家Ivana Gudelj和植物疾病专家Nick Talbot教授所领导的团队研究了极具破坏性的稻瘟病。他们引入了一种致病的混合霉菌，这一混合霉菌包含一种破坏性的致病菌株和一种温和的突变体。因为温和菌株的存在，他们期望总体的罹病度下降。但是，他们的发现正相反。水稻植株死于更严重的疾病。
The Exeter University research, published in eLife, shows that the therapy can in some circumstances have the opposite effect, and that the way the pathogen will behave can be unpredictable, leading to more severe disease. The research highlights the need for these new strategies to be carefully tested before they are used therapeutically.
Exeter大学的发表在eLife的研究表明这一疗法在某些环境有相反的作用，致病菌的表现将不可预测，可能会导致更严重的疾病。这一研究强调那些新策略应用于治疗前，需要被仔细检验。

The scientists used cooperation theory and mathematical modelling to identify the reason for their surprising result. They found that in some circumstances pacifists "helped" aggressive microbes to be more efficient in utilising resources obtained from the host.
科学家使用协同理论和数学模型来找到他们的惊人结果的原因。他们发现在一些环境中温和派“帮助”致病微生物更高效地利用从宿主获取的资源。(2016-12-31)
Professor Ivana Gudelj, who led the research, said: "Our study shows that a promising disease management strategy may not always be effective and indeed may have damaging unforeseen consequences. Importantly, our work also provides a foundation for the analysis of when, and why, this can happen. We find that the mechanisms driving our unexpected findings when treating rice blast infection are pertinent for many diseases involving bacterial and fungal pathogens"
领导这一研究的Ivana Gudelj教授说：“我们的研究证明一项有希望的疾病控制策略并不总是有效，并且事实上可能破坏性的不可预见的后果。重要的是，我们的工作也为分析这种后果何时、何故发生提供了基础。我们发现我们在治疗稻瘟病时的意外发现后的机制也适用于由细菌、霉菌引发的很多疾病。”
Developing new ways of treating infectious disease has become more pressing with the development of resistance to antibiotics.
开发治疗感染性疾病的新方法已因细菌对抗生素的耐药性的发展而日见紧迫。
One strategy being explored to treat infections that resist current drugs involves neutralising the disease-causing agent. This strategy involves extracting the agent from the patient so that scientists can remove components of the microbe's DNA in order to neutralise the disease.
一项正在被考察的治疗耐药感染的策略为中和致病因子（细菌）。这一策略从病人提取致病因子以便科学家去除细菌DNA中的相应部分来控制疾病。
This new harmless agent is then grown in the lab and re-introduced to the disease site with the expectation that it will out-compete its more harmful cousin by stealing resources the disease needs to proliferate. Such research has proved effective in several lab tests.
新的无害的细菌在实验室中培养后再注入病人体内，研究人员期待这些无害的细菌可以与致病菌竞争繁殖的资源并胜出。这样的研究在许多实验研究中都被证明有效。
The University of Exeter scientists tested this method in rice blast infections, but found more severe disease symptoms.
Exeter大学的科学家用稻瘟病检验了这一方法，但发现了更严重的病症。
Professor Nick Talbot, Professor of Molecular Genetics and expert in plant diseases, said: "The strategy of introducing less aggressive microbes to fight more aggressive ones may prove effective to control some crop disease, but our study shows that they are not a silver bullet and caution needs to be exercised. We need to understand how microbes interact with each other in natural settings, before we can try to alter their ability to cause disease in this way. Our study also shows why mathematicians and biologists need to work together more often, because we would not have understood this phenomenon at all without the mathematical analysis carried out."
分子遗传学教授、植物病专家Nick Talbot教授说：“引入低害化的微生物来对抗相应致病微生物的策略可能在控制部分作物病害时是有效的，但我们的研究表明这些并不是捷径（silver bullet??），且需多加注意。在我们为此试图改变微生物的致病能力前，我们需要弄清在自然环境下微生物间如何相互作用。我们的研究也表明了数学家与生物学家更需要一起工作，因为如果没有数学分析的介入我们将不能弄清这一现象的机制。”
Richard Lindsay, a PhD student who worked on the research team, added: "Our findings are of central importance in understanding how microbial infections evolve, but also have wider significance for the treatment of cancer and the therapeutic control of disease in humans, animals and plants."
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-combat-disease-worse.html#jCp
研究团队的博士生Richard Lindsay补充道：“我们的发现对理解微生物感染如何逐步发展至关重要，但也对治疗癌症及医治人类、动物和植物疾病有广泛意义。”(2017-01-01)