Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Saarland University, Homburg, Germany.
Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Dec 2;10(1):20992. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-77168-x.
Staphylococcus aureus is a common cause of catheter-related blood stream infections (CRBSI). The bacterium has the ability to form multilayered biofilms on implanted material, which usually requires the removal of the implanted medical device. A first major step of this biofilm formation is the initial adhesion of the bacterium to the artificial surface. Here, we used single-cell force spectroscopy (SCFS) to study the initial adhesion of S. aureus to central venous catheters (CVCs). SCFS performed with S. aureus on the surfaces of naïve CVCs produced comparable maximum adhesion forces on three types of CVCs in the low nN range (~ 2-7 nN). These values were drastically reduced, when CVC surfaces were preincubated with human blood plasma or human serum albumin, and similar reductions were observed when S. aureus cells were probed with freshly explanted CVCs withdrawn from patients without CRBSI. These findings indicate that the initial adhesion capacity of S. aureus to CVC tubing is markedly reduced, once the CVC is inserted into the vein, and that the risk of contamination of the CVC tubing by S. aureus during the insertion process might be reduced by a preconditioning of the CVC surface with blood plasma or serum albumin.
金黄色葡萄球菌是导管相关血流感染（CRBSI）的常见病因。该细菌有在植入材料上形成多层生物膜的能力，通常需要移除植入的医疗设备。生物膜形成的第一步主要是细菌最初黏附在人工表面上。在这里，我们使用单细胞力谱（SCFS）研究了金黄色葡萄球菌对中心静脉导管（CVC）的初始黏附。在未处理的 CVC 表面上用金黄色葡萄球菌进行 SCFS 实验，在低 nN 范围内（~2-7 nN），三种类型的 CVC 上产生的最大黏附力相当。当 CVC 表面用人体血浆或人血清白蛋白预先孵育时，这些值会大幅降低，并且当用刚从没有 CRBSI 的患者中取出的新植入的 CVC 探测金黄色葡萄球菌细胞时，也观察到类似的降低。这些发现表明，一旦 CVC 插入静脉，金黄色葡萄球菌对 CVC 管的初始黏附能力就会明显降低，并且通过用血浆或血清白蛋白预处理 CVC 表面，可能会降低金黄色葡萄球菌在插入过程中污染 CVC 管的风险。
