Biofilms enable cutaneous staph bacteria from medical tools to enter the patient’s body, US scientists report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Patients during their stay in hospitals are exposed to infections resulting from contamination of medical devices such as catheters with bacteria, which are normally part of the bacterial flora of the skin of patients and medical staff. Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria, called cutaneous staphylococcus in Polish, are the most common cause of this type of infection.
The ability to infect staphylococci is due to the ability to create biofilms – clusters of bacteria attached to surfaces that are extremely difficult to remove and clean – including from medical instruments.
Michael Otto and a team from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda discovered in studies on catheterized mice that cutaneous staphylococcus bacteria produce special proteins that allow them to detach the biofilm from the surfaces they are attached to and cause infection in the patient’s body.
The researchers also observed that antibodies against these bacterial proteins inhibited the spread of infection in mice. According to the authors of the study, inhibiting the detachment of bacterial biofilms from the substrate may be a good way to prevent hospital-acquired infections. (PAP)