Bacteriophage Versus Antimicrobial Agents, Article Critique Example

The research methods in the article written by Kumari, S. et al., 2011 was thoroughly written. The article included specific techniques used in order to study the effects of topical application of silver nitrate and gentamicin on wound infections.  The authors do specify that the bacteria strains and antimicrobial agents were ordered from an outside laboratory, specifically for K. pneumoniae  B5055 and silver nitrate.  In addition, the author’s state that their methods for inducing burn wound infections on mice was approved by the Institutional Animals Ethical Committee.  Furthermore, the authors indicate that their method for inflicting the burn infections was taken from a previous experiment conducted by Dale et al., 2004 and the injections of K. pneumoniae  B5055 was established by Kumari et al., 2009.  This suggests that their methods were previously used and successful.  However, the methods for applying the hydrogel and the statistical analyses were somewhat questionable.  For instance, the authors use five groups in the experiment, one of which is a control and the others which are experimental.  The author’s do not change the amount of hydrogel in the variable groups; they only use 0.5ml on each subject. Perhaps there should have been an increase or decrease in the dosage of hydrogel used in order to check for any differences in dosages.  In regard to the statistical analyses, the author’s do not illustrate the effectiveness of their statistical analyses.  The authors indicate that they used Student’s t-test, one-way ANOVA and the Bonferroni test. Most researchers are familiar with Student’s t-test and one-way ANOVA’s; however the use for Bonferroni is not standard.  Therefore, the author’s should have cited previous research use for this statistical method.

The results of were explained statistically using P-values.  The authors did specify some statistically significant data when comparing the control group with the experimental group, such as the 1000 mg gentamicin l21 treated group and the phage-treated group (P<0.001).  This data supports the initial hypothesis that the topical application of gentamicin and the Klebsiella-specific phage can help treat induced burns. The use of silver nitrate, however, did not show significantly different results when compared to the control group (P>0.05).  As mentioned previously, perhaps a different dosage of silver nitrate should be applied, tested and compared to a control group.