Doctors have combined two unconventional treatments — viruses that kill bacteria and a fecal microbiota transplant — to tackle recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs), with encouraging but very preliminary results.
Researchers at Fraunhofer ITMP at University Hospital Cologne, with Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, treated three women with chronic, hard-to-treat UTIs caused by E. coli. Each received phage therapy — bacteria-killing viruses given orally and directly into the bladder for eight days — and two of the three also got a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) to restore healthy gut microbes that can harbor resistant bacteria between infections. The findings were published in Nature Microbiology.
What happened
The two patients who received the combined therapy saw long-term reductions in UTIs over roughly two years, while the one who received phages alone still had episodes, though with milder symptoms. All three substantially cut their antibiotic use and reported better quality of life, with no side effects noted.
Important caveats
The researchers are blunt about the limits: “Three patients are not a sufficiently large sample to establish this new therapy, and control groups were lacking.” Still, at a time when antibiotic resistance is rising, the approach is intriguing enough that a proper clinical trial (the EU-funded REPhRAME project) is scheduled to begin in June 2027. For now, it is a promising signal — not a proven treatment.