Significance of staphylococcus epidermidis in health care-associated infections, from contaminant to clinically relevant pathogen: This is a wake-up call!

Abstract

Coagulase-negative staphylococci, particularly Staphylococcus epidermidis, have been recognized as an important cause of health care-associated infections. Concurrently, S. epidermidis is a common contaminant in clinical cultures, which poses a diagnostic challenge. An article in this issue of Journal of Clinical Microbiology (I. Tolo, J. C. Thomas, R. S. B. Fischer, E. L. Brown, B. M. Gray, and D. A. Robinson, J Clin Microbiol 54:1711-1719, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.03345-15) describes a rapid single nucleotide polymorphism-based assay for distinguishing between S. epidermidis isolates from hospital and nonhospital sources, which represents an important contribution to the characterization and understanding of S. epidermidis health careassociated infections.