The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir Hardcover – Illustrated, February 26, 2019

This is one of those books to hold onto for a lifetime. While my advanced degree is in Microbiology, I am a virologist in spirit and training. However, my early days working in a clinical lab gave me a lot of respect for the ravages of bacterial infections. From a personal perspective (lung and cancer issues, often intersecting to yield complicated pulmonary infections), I have always respected pseudomonas for causing difficult to treat infections in burn patients. However, this book also helped me better appreciate a recent co-infection with both pseudomonas and acinetobacter. In the midst of that infection, I kept thinking that acinetobacter was the silent passenger but this book helped me better understand that I was battling a dual threat, and being lucky enough to clear the infection after dragging around an IV pole with antibiotics for 18 days was a small price to pay for getting my lungs clear of the infection. I suspect that my pulmonary team was more cognizant of the threat, given my main pulmonary doc's multiple deployments to the Middle East but again - I was VERY lucky. Stephanie Strathdee has put together a very compelling read on how innocuous life events can be critical turning points for everything we know about science and caring for loved ones. I was equally as fascinated because I taught biology for years and frequently posed the question to my classes as to why there was so little push for using phage (for those who don't know - viruses that invade bacteria, so my virology roots coming home to roost) in treating bacterial infections in the US. This book helped fill in the missing details on how the science was the driver in much of this failure to use phage clinically, rather than some ulterior motive by big Pharma (a frequent barrier suggested by my students). This is one of my books that I will likely never loan out, as I want to make sure to keep it in my bookshelf for reference.

A dear friend recommended this book, THE PERFECT PREDATOR. The weekend I received it from Amazon I started reading it and couldn't put it down. It reads like an exciting thriller filled with fascinating scientific facts and also one of the most beautiful love stories. It is brilliantly written by Dr. Steffanie Strathdee and her husband Dr. Tom Patterson. One of the best books I have read in a decade...and I read a lot of books.

This book was super interesting with an unexpected twist. I read it for my anatomy class and normally I hate reading books that are assigned for me but this was a pleasant surprise! You should read the book if you are a young adult. I do not recommend for younger children as this is a rough topic. Overall this was an incredibly interesting book and I think you should read it!

“The Perfect Predator” is a gripping true life story of a scientist’s desperate race to find a cure for her husband’s multi-drug resistant bacterial infection. The growing global threat of multi-drug resistant infections, or “Superbugs”, has been widely reported in the media. This book provides a first hand account of the havoc that an untreatable bacterial infection can wreak on the human body and the challenges these infections pose for health care professionals.Most of the story is told by Steffanie Strathdee, a Professor of Epidemiology. Her husband and co-author Tom Patterson (also a scientist) becomes ill while they are vacationing in Egypt. It soon becomes clear that this is not food poisoning or a stomach virus. Patterson is initially diagnosed with pancreatitis in Egypt, and is airlifted to Frankfurt where he is diagnosed with an infected 15 mm cyst teaming with a germ described by the doctors as “the worst bacteria on the planet.”Patterson is stabilized and transferred to a hospital near their home in San Diego. Lab tests reveal that the infection has spread throughout his body, and the bacterium is resistant to all known antibiotics. He suffers through multiple septic shocks and his organs begin to fail. Increasingly desperate, Strathdee does a Google search and identifies phage therapy as a possible treatment option, discovered in the late 19th century but largely forgotten by western medicine after the discovery of penicillin. Strathdee learns that there may be phages (a type of virus) that will attack the drug-resistant bacterium that’s killing her husband.What follows is an amazing story of scientific collaboration and rapid problem solving by multiple research laboratories to identify suitable phages, purify them to remove potentially lethal contaminants, and obtain approval from the FDA to initiate the experimental therapy.Once I got started I couldn’t put this book down. Professor Sthrathdee vividly describes the physical and emotional devastation wrought by her husbands illness. She writes with a keen attention to detail and conveys the roller coaster of emotions she experiences during her husband’s 9 month hospitalization. Patterson contributes several short interludes detailing the dreams and hallucinations he experienced during the illness.The final chapter provides a clear and concise summary of the antibiotic resistance problem and expands on the potential of phage therapy to treat drug resistant infections. It is acknowledged that much will need to be done to translate a medical miracle to a practical treatment option for the large number of people afflicted with multi-drug resistant infections. The reader is left with a clear sense of the enormity of the problem yet with reason to feel hopeful that scientists will continue to collaborate and innovate to save lives.I recommend this book to readers who enjoy medical thrillers and also scientists and public policy makers who want to learn more about antimicrobial resistance.