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- Forget MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) and E. coli, there’s another bacterium that is becoming increasingly dangerous due to antibiotic resistance—and it’s 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 it is often overlooked by DOCTORS and scientists because it is so abundant.
- Researchers from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath warn that the threat posed by this organism should be taken more seriously and use extra precautions for those at higher risk of infection who are due to undergo surgery.
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- They have identified a set of 61 genes that allow this normally harmless skin bacterium to cause life-threatening illness.
- They hope that by understanding why some strains of S. epidermidis cause disease in certain circumstances, they could in the future identify which patients are most at risk of infection before undergoing surgery.
- The disease-causing genes were found to help the bacterium grow in the bloodstream, avoid the host’s immune response, make the cell surface sticky so that the organisms can form biofilms and make the bug resistant to antibiotics.
- The team published their study in Nature Communications this week.
- “It’s always been ignored clinically because it’s frequently been assumed that it was a contaminant in lab samples or it was simply accepted as a known risk of surgery.
- “Post-surgical infections can be incredibly serious and can be fatal. Infection accounts for almost a third of deaths in the UK so I believe we should be doing more to reduce the risk if we possibly can.
- “Because the bug is so abundant, they can evolve very fast by swapping genes with each other.
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