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How A 100-Year-Old Treatment Could Help Save Us From Superbugs : Short Wave In 2015, Steffanie Strathdee's husband nearly died from a superbug, an antibiotic resistant bacteria he contracted in Egypt. Desperate to save him, she reached out to the scientific community for help. What she got back? A 100-year-old treatment that's considered experimental in the U.S. Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist, tells us how it works, its drawbacks, and its potential role in our fight against superbugs. (Encore episode.)

Short Wave

How A 100-Year-Old Treatment Could Help Save Us From Superbugs

Madeline K. Sofia

How A 100-Year-Old Treatment Could Help Save Us From Superbugs

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Computer generated illustration of the moment a bacteriophage lands onto the surface of a bacterium. NANOCLUSTERING/SCIENCE PHOTO LIB/Getty Images/Science Photo Libra hide caption

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NANOCLUSTERING/SCIENCE PHOTO LIB/Getty Images/Science Photo Libra

Computer generated illustration of the moment a bacteriophage lands onto the surface of a bacterium.

NANOCLUSTERING/SCIENCE PHOTO LIB/Getty Images/Science Photo Libra

In 2015, Steffanie Strathdee's husband nearly died from a superbug, an antibiotic resistant bacteria he contracted in Egypt. Desperate to save him, she reached out to the scientific community for help. What she got back? A 100-year-old treatment that's considered experimental in the U.S. Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist, tells us how it works, its drawbacks, and its potential role in our fight against superbugs. (Encore episode.)

She also co-wrote the memoir, "The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug."

Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Davis, fact-checked by Emily Vaughn and edited by Viet Le.