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While superbugs such as E. coli and MRSA cause misery across the country, Bath scientists have warned of another bacterium that is becoming increasingly dangerous because of antibiotic resistance – and that is present on the skin of every person on the planet.
A close relative of MRSA, Staphylococcus epidermidis , is a major cause of life-threatening infections after surgery, but clinicians and scientists often ignore it because of its frequency.
Researchers at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath have warned that the threat posed by this organism should be taken more seriously and that health professionals should take extra precautions for people at risk. higher infection who have to undergo surgery.
Worryingly, they have identified a set of 61 genes that allow this normally harmless skin bacterium to cause a life-threatening disease.
(Image: NIAID)
They hope that by understanding why some strains of S. epidermidis cause the disease under certain circumstances, they could in the future identify the patients most at risk for infection before undergoing surgery.
They took samples from patients with infections after hip or knee joint replacement and fracture fixation operations and compared them to samples taken from the skin healthy volunteers.
They compared genetic variation across the genome of the bacteria found in samples of sick and healthy individuals. From this they identified 61 genes in the disease-causing bacteria that were not present in most healthy samples.
(Image: Janice Carr)
Surprisingly, though, there were a small number of healthy people who carried the deadliest form of the bacteria without knowing it.
The genes responsible for the disease were found to help the bacteria to grow in the blood, avoid the host's immune system response, and make the surface of the cell sticky so that the organisms could form biofilms and make the antibiotic resistant virus.
The team published its study in Nature Communications this week.
Professor Sam Sheppard, director of bioinformatics at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath, led the research. He said: " Staphlococcus epidermidis is a deadly pathogen for all to see.
"We always ignored it clinically because it was often badumed that it was a contaminant in laboratory samples or that it was simply accepted as a known risk of surgery.
"Postoperative infections can be extremely serious and fatal. In the United Kingdom, infection accounts for almost a third of deaths, so I think we should do more to reduce the risks if we can.
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"If we can identify the people most at risk of infection, we can target patients with additional hygiene precautions before undergoing surgery."
He added: "Since the virus is very abundant, it can evolve very quickly by exchanging genes with each other.
"If we do not do anything to control this, there is a risk that these genes responsible for the disease will spread more widely, which means that postoperative antibiotic-resistant infections may become even more common."
Professor Dietrich Mack, of the Bioscientia Institute for Medical Diagnostics GmbH, Germany, said: "Prosthetic joint replacement surgery helps many patients to lead an independent and pain free life, but it can follow a catastrophic course. S. epidermidis infection.
"These infections are difficult to diagnose and it is hoped that the genes badociated with the disease will help to separate innocuous cutaneous isolates from pathogenic isolates. S. epidermidis strains in the clinical laboratory. This needs to be addressed in future studies. "
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