Staphylococcus aureus biofilms

Abstract

The Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus is among the five most common isolates in the clinical microbiology laboratory (1,2). One of the reasons that it is such a ubiquitous pathogen is that it colonizes the anterior nasopharynx in 10 to 40% of humans and can be easily transferred to the skin (3). This colonization predisposes to infection. If trauma, medical procedures, percutaneous devices, or injections disrupt the natural skin or mucous membrane barrier, colonizing S. aureus can invade, producing a broad spectrum of clinical disease. A recent study showed that in 82% of S. aureus bacteremias, the blood and anterior nares isolates were identical, suggesting that these bacteremias were endogenous in origin (4).