Department of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America.
Department of Veterans Affairs, Eastern Colorado Healthcare System, Aurora, Colorado, United States of America.
PLoS Pathog. 2020 Nov 12;16(11):e1009026. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1009026. eCollection 2020 Nov.
Our skin is our first line of defense against environmental and pathogenic challenges. It is densely populated by a flora of bacteria, fungi, and viruses that normally interact with each other and with our immune system to promote skin health and homeostasis. Staphylococcus epidermidis is one of the most abundant bacterial colonizers of healthy human skin. While the field has historically assumed that all S. epidermidis isolates behave similarly, emerging evidence suggests that colonization by specific strains of S. epidermidis can either help or hurt the skin barrier depending on the context. In this short review, we discuss what is currently understood about S. epidermidis strain-level diversity and evaluate costs and benefits of S. epidermidis skin colonization. We challenge the current dogma that "all S. epidermidis strains behave equally" and posit that behavior is in fact highly context and strain dependent. Finally, in light of current proposals to use skin commensals as nonantibiotic treatments for acute or chronic skin diseases, we conclude that more work is urgently needed to fully understand the pathogenic and protective roles of commensals before we use them therapeutically.
我们的皮肤是抵御环境和病原体挑战的第一道防线。它密集地栖息着细菌、真菌和病毒组成的菌群，这些菌群通常相互作用，并与我们的免疫系统相互作用，以促进皮肤健康和体内平衡。表皮葡萄球菌是健康人体皮肤上最丰富的细菌定植菌之一。尽管该领域历史上一直认为所有表皮葡萄球菌分离株的行为都相似，但新出现的证据表明，特定表皮葡萄球菌菌株的定植可以根据具体情况帮助或损害皮肤屏障。在这篇简短的综述中，我们讨论了目前对表皮葡萄球菌菌株水平多样性的理解，并评估了表皮葡萄球菌皮肤定植的成本和收益。我们质疑目前“所有表皮葡萄球菌菌株的行为都相同”的观点，并认为实际上行为高度依赖于具体情况和菌株。最后，鉴于目前提出使用皮肤共生菌作为急性或慢性皮肤疾病的非抗生素治疗方法，我们得出结论，在我们进行治疗性使用之前，迫切需要开展更多工作，以充分了解共生菌的致病和保护作用。
