Christof von Eiff

..Therefore, when an infection persists for weeks or months or fails to respond to antimicrobial therapy, clinicians as well as laboratory personnel should consider further efforts to search for this staphylococcal subpopulation...

..Similar effects have been reported for fluoroquinolones on various cell types. Since these effects have poorly been characterized in CRS, we examined anti-inflammatory effects of ciprofloxacin on human nasal epithelial cells (HNECs)...

..Thirty-seven patients (29.6%) harbored S. aureus in their anterior nares, three of these patients (8.1%) had S. aureus SCVs. Interestingly, TMP-SMZ does not appear to select for S. aureus SCVs in nasal swabs of these patients...

..The co-possession of different virulence factors and their probable synergy should receive more attention in order to better understand their role in pathogenicity...

..Finally, further studies are needed to translate the knowledge on the mechanisms of biofilm formation into applicable therapeutic and preventive strategies...

..This compound exhibited an excellent antistaphylococcal activity, comparable to that of linezolid...

..However, future studies are warranted to translate the knowledge on the pathogenesis of device-associated infections into applicable prevention strategies...

..Key results of the PM analysis were confirmed in independent growth studies and by using Etest strips for susceptibility testing. PM technology is a new and efficient technology for assessing cellular phenotypes in S. aureus...

....

....

....

..To evaluate the reliability of this new assay to successfully detect MRSA strains of different origin and clonality, well-characterized S. aureus strains were tested in this study...

..Minimum bactericidal concentrations of 0.16 microg/ml and zones of inhibition ranging between 15 and 21 mm in diameter demonstrate that lysostaphin was highly active against all isolates tested...

....

..In addition, faropenem was active against many methicillin-resistant strains of S. aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci...

..This review discusses what is known of the biology of SCVs and describes the recovery and significance of Staphylococcus SCVs in clinical specimen...

..Apart from strains with constitutive expression of MLS(B) resistance, all staphylococcal strains tested were inhibited by < or = 0.063 mg/L of ABT-773, irrespective of the resistance phenotype for methicillin...

....

..aureus SCV infections) and strongly suggest that SCVs of coagulase-negative staphylococci must be actively sought, because they grow very slowly and can be easily missed...

..The presence of intracellular S. aureus SCVs may protect against host defenses and antibiotic therapy and thus may have contributed to this patient's very prolonged skin infection...

..The biofilm present on infected devices plays an important role in the pathogenicity of the infecting organism by protecting the embedded staphylococci and reducing the efficacy of host defenses and antimicrobial killing...

..The bactericidal effect of extracorporeal shock waves might provide the basis for the development of novel therapeutic strategies for bacterial infections...

..A number of isolates with elevated quinolone MICs were observed...

..In conclusion, physiological changes between normal and SCV S. aureus phenotypes are more complex than reflected by defined electron transport chain-interrupting mutants and their complemented counterparts...

..The ongoing epidemiological shift and changes of MRSA sources create a need for revision of guidelines for MRSA infection control and treatment...

..The objective of our study was to investigate the S. aureus carriage among a remote indigenous African population and to determine the molecular characteristics of the isolates, particularly those that were PVL-positive...

..In conclusion, interrupting a hemin biosynthetic gene in S. epidermidis resulted in an SCV phenotype. Markedly larger cell clusters and the ability of the hemB mutant to form a biofilm are related to the augmented expression of PIA...

..aureus-specific gene in parallel and applied directly to clinical specimens would be associated with an unacceptable positive predictive value of about 40%...

..aureus isolates harbor subsets of pyrogenic toxin superantigens. The potential contribution of seo and sem to the pathogenic potential of S. aureus has to be further evaluated...

..aureus. Moreover, mainly due to the fixed combinations of seg plus sei, as well as sed plus sej, the possession of multiple PTSAg genes (62.9%) is more frequent than assumed so far...

..In contrast, the spa type-deduced multilocus sequence typing clonal complex (MLST-CC) was not able to predict the invasiveness of MRSA strains equally well. The underlying mechanism remains to be elucidated...

..Thus, FTIR spectroscopy allowed a rapid and reproducible tool for the examination of different subpopulations of S. aureus on solid and in broth media for diagnostic and research purposes...

..In conclusion, the most accurate and rapid method to detect both the species S. aureus and the SCV phenotype is to inoculate specimens onto both Columbia blood agar and SAID...

..Thus, the unique occurrence of Eap in S. aureus offers a promising tool particularly suitable for molecular diagnostics of this pathogen...

....

..However, the frequency of stx-negative/eae-positive E. coli in stools of HUS patients and the clinical significance of such strains are unknown...

..aureus phenotype-specific expression of four novel npcRNAs was documented. Thus, the presence of differentially expressed npcRNAs in S. aureus may help to understand the phenotypic variation and its associated pathogenicity...

..In contrast to phenotypic methods and the NCBI database, the novel high-quality RIDOM sequence database provides excellent identification of staphylococci, including rarely isolated species and phenotypic variants...

..5%). Except for the limitations with isolates of hoofed animals, the S. intermediusnuc PCR assay has potential for rapid identification of S. intermedius and differentiation from other coagulase-positive staphylococci including S. aureus...

..391 μg/ml (range, 0.024 to 1.563 μg/ml). All 192 clinical isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci exhibited MIC values of >50 μg/ml. In conclusion, PRF-119 exhibited very good activity specifically against S. aureus...

..In individual cases, secondary amputation is unavoidable in the effort to cure infection...

..aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci...

..In conclusion, the identified differences may be responsible for the SCV phenotype and its association with chronic and persistent infections...

..Only detection of the mecA gene by PCR and the MRSA-Screen latex agglutination test using a higher colony number were shown to be reliable methods to rapidly detect methicillin resistance in these variants...

..Thus far, persistent and antibiotic-refractory infections have been largely associated with a subpopulation of S. aureus, the small-colony variants (SCVs)...

..In fact, 40 (26.7%) of these isolates revealed nonspecific results, significantly associated with the time allowed for agglutination...

..05)...

..S. aureus serine proteases were identified to modulate chemokine synthesis and activate NF-kappaB in nasal epithelial cells, and may therefore be relevant for the pathophysiology of chronic rhinosinusitis...

..K. rhizophila expands the emerging number of "micrococci" considered to be etiologically relevant...

..The success of CF clones in terms of cocolonization and/or infection with S. aureus, prevalence of clones, or persistence appeared to be independent of agr group specificity...

....

..These results suggest that endothelially expressed TLR5 might play a previously unrecognized role in the innate immune response toward bacterial Ags...

..This database correctly identified 55 clinical staphylococcal isolates; all were correctly identified at the species level. At the subspecies level, rpoB misidentified only 2 isolates...

..nov. is proposed. The type strain is strain Muenster 2000T (= DSM 13884T = CCM 4918T)...

....

..The findings support the hypothesis that astrocyte activation might contribute to the development of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia...

..Since the first description of K. schroeteri in 2002, four cases of endocarditis have been published, suggesting antecedent and continuing underdiagnosis...

..Vancomycin killing activities against hemB mutants were markedly attenuated, demonstrating approximately 50% less effect, a result which was well described by a Hill-type pharmacodynamic model...

..When growing in CDM, the susceptibility of SCVs varied according to the magnitude of deltapsi...

..aureus are more virulent on a per organism basis than its isogenic parental strain in the model of septic arthritis. This can at least in part be explained by the ability of SCV to produce high amounts of destructive proteases...

..These data show that SCVs are able to colonize multiple tissues in vivo and that the menD mutation provides the organism with a survival advantage during antimicrobial therapy, compared with its parent strain, in selected target tissues...

..Furthermore, the amounts of most of the extracellular virulence factors were significantly reduced by a mutation in hemB, which is consistent with previous reports...

..Both agr-positive and agr-lacking hemB mutants were also more efficiently internalized by human embryonic kidney cells than were their isogenic controls, presumably because of increased surface display of their fibronectin adhesins...

..No local or systemic side effects due to HAC or vancomycin were seen. HAC is an effective carrier material for antibiotic compounds even in refractory infections due to MRSA or S. aureus SCVs...

..Therefore, the results of this study warrant further preclinical investigations into the possibilities of using hLF1-11 for the treatment of osteomyelitis...

....

..Hence, the polyphasic approach used in this study can be reliably and advantageously applied for typing egc-positive S. aureus strains...

..This study provides the first extended synopsis of the transcriptional patterns of different regulators over the entire growth cycle in the widely used Newman strain...

..SCVs are adapted to intracellular survival and persistence in the host under certain circumstances. The ability to form a variant subpopulation affords S. aureus additional survival options...

..aureus. In this study, we show that clinical SCVs as well as hemB- and menD-deficient mutants of S. aureus are greatly reduced in virulence in the C. elegans infection model...

..To assess if deficiency in transmembrane potential, a common characteristic of SCVs that are haemin- or menadione-auxotrophs, affects the uptake of the peptide into the bacterial cytoplasm...

..ESWT proved to exert significant antibacterial effect in an energy-dependent manner. Certain types of difficult-to-treat infections could offer new applications for ESWT...

..Thus, on one hand we document effective bactericidal activity of human endothelial cell lysosomes towards staphylococci, and on the other hand we provide evidence that certain SCVs are capable to withstand this activity...

..This Review covers the phenotypic, genetic and clinical picture associated with small colony variants, with an emphasis on staphylococci, for which the greatest amount of information is available...