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While superbugs such as E. coli and MRSA cause misery across the country, Bath scientists warned of another bacterium that is becoming increasingly dangerous due to antibiotic resistance – and that is present on the skin of every person on the planet. [19659002] 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 of its frequency.
Milner researchers The Center for Evolution of the University of Bath warned that the threat posed by this body should be taken more seriously and that health professionals should take extra precautions for people to high risk of infection who have to undergo surgery.
a set of 61 genes that allow this normally harmless skin bacterium to cause a life-threatening disease.
(Image: NIAID) [19659007] They hope that by understanding why some strains of S. epidermidis are at the origin of the disease under certain circumstances In the future, they will be able to identify the patients most at risk of infection before undergoing surgery.
Patients who had infections after hip and knee replacement and fracture fixation operations and compared them to samples taken from the skin of healthy volunteers
]. From that, they identified 61 genes in the disease causing bacterium that were not present in most healthy samples.
(Image: Janice Carr)
Surprisingly though, there are a small number of healthy individuals carrying the most lethal form of the bacteria without knowing it .
The genes responsible for the disease have been discovered to help the bacteria to grow in the blood, to avoid the host immune system's response and to make the surface of the cell sticky so that organisms can form biofilms and make the virus resistant to antibiotics.
The team published its study in Nature Communications this week.
Professor Sam Sheppard, director of the bioinformatics department at the Milner Center for Evolution at the University of Bath, led the research. He stated: " Staphlococcus epidermidis is a deadly visible pathogen.
"He was always ignored clinically because it was often badumed that it was a contaminant in the laboratory samples or that it was simply accepted as a known product risk of surgery
"Post-operative infections can be extremely serious and can be fatal." In the United Kingdom, with almost one third of deaths due to infection, I think we should do more to reduce the risk if we can.
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"If we can identify the people most at risk of infection, we can target patients who have hygiene precautions to take before undergoing surgery."
He has Added: "Because the virus is so abundant, they can evolve very quickly. by exchanging genes with each other.
"If we do nothing to control this, there is a risk that these genes responsible for the disease will spread more widely, which means that antibiotic-resistant postoperative infections may become even more common.
Prof. Dietrich Mack of the Bioscientia Institute for Medical Diagnosis in Germany said: "Prosthetic joint replacement surgery helps many patients to live independently and painlessly, but it can follow a catastrophic course through . epidermidis infection.
"These infections are difficult to diagnose and it is hoped that genes badociated with a disease may help to separate harmless skin isolates from the disease at the origin of the disease . epidermidis strains in the clinical laboratory. »
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