Synovial Bacterial Lab

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or more commonly, MRSA, is an emerging infectious disease affecting many people worldwide. MRSA, in particular, is a very interesting disease because although many people can be carriers of it, it generally only affects those with a depressed immune system; this is why it is so prevalent in places like nursing homes and hospitals. It can be spread though surgeries, artificial joints, tubing, and skin-to-skin contact. Although there is not one specific treatment of this disease, there are ways to test what antibiotics work best and sometimes antibiotics aren’t even necessary.

The Gram-positive cell wall is composed of peptidoglycans, a thick layer of protein-sugar complexes taking up 60-90% of their cell wall. Peptidoglycan is composed of two glucose derivatives, N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetylglucosamine alternated and cross-linked by tetrapeptides that is composed of L-alanine, D-glutamine, L-lysine

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a bacterium that is resistant to many available high- level beta-lactam antibiotics, which include penicillins, “antistaphylococcal” penicillins and cephalosporins. Staphyloccoci are the most important bacteria that cause disease in humans. MRSA is sometimes branded as a nosocomial infection as it usually plagues patients that are receiving treatment in a hospital. The skin is the most common site of infection, where MRSA can cause cellulitis, folliculitis, or boils in the skin, but can also commonly be found in the nose, underarm, groin, upper respiratory tract, intestine, vagina and rectal areas of the body. MRSA infections occur with there is a break in the skin that allows the Methicillin resistant

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a spherical bacteria which is known to produce a cytotoxin called Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PLV) which destroys leukocytes, and kills tissue (Lina et al., 1999). Five percent of strains of Staphylococcus are known to produce the disease-causing toxin (Lina et al., 1999), but though the amount of PLV-producing strains is somewhat small, the strains which produce PLV are apparently resistant to vancomycin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat staph infections (CDC, 2002). The first recorded case of S. aureus resistance to vancomycin was a reduction in sensitivity to the antibiotic observed in Japan, and has since spread to the United States (CDC, 2002). The most common source of infection of these drug-resistant bacteria are actually in hospitals, wherein the patients are exposed to the bacteria and subsequently infected (CDC, 2002).

Poor personal hygiene and not covering open wounds can lead to infection with golden staph. Golden Staph causes disease due to direct infection of the targeted area or due to the production of toxins by the bacteria. Infections can include Boils, impetigo, food poisoning, cellulitis, and toxic shock syndrome are all examples of diseases that can be caused by Staphylococcus. Staph infections can occur among anyone, however certain groups of people are at greater risk, including “newborn infants, breastfeeding women, and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, cancer, vascular disease, and lung disease. Injecting drug users, those with skin injuries or disorders, intravenous catheters, surgical incisions, and those with a weakened immune system due either to disease or a result of immune suppressing medications all have an increased risk of developing staph infections” (Conrad, 2018). Symptoms and signs of a staph infection include pus, for example boil, furuncle or abscess. The infected are if typically tender and painful, abiding with redness and swelling. A bacterial infection, like staphylococcus aureus consists of countless individual bacteria. Most infections caused by golden staph are treatable with antibiotics. Staph is treated through three main antibiotics, these antibiotics include penicillin, methicillin and vancomycin. However, there is a strong possibility that a

aureus is due to several factors. It is coagulase positive which forms accesses and prevents phagocytosis. It produces several exotoxins that create different responses in the body such as exfoliative toxin which causes scalded skin syndrome and enterotoxin which causes Staphylococcal food poisoning. Exotoxins produced by S. aureus are also responsible for Toxic Shock Syndrome, which is associated with tampon use and wound packing. In general, S. aureus is resistant to penicillin and some strains are resistant to methicillin (MRSA). According to the Minnesota Department of Health, most skin infections caused by S. aureus are self-limiting and do not require antibiotic treatment, but in cases where immunity is suppressed or skin is broken due to surgery or injury, infections may require antibiotic treatment or abscess drainage to prevent more serious infection

The effectiveness of disease treatment is often presented by the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. Cystic Fibrosis (CF) for example, is a pulmonary infection characterized by the poly-microbial growth of bacteria within biofilms, in the pulmonary tract of humans. For children suffering from CF, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) initially colonizes their airways, which with age, becomes replaced by Pseudomonas Aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa). The eradication of P. aeruginosa by antibiotics fails in 10-40% of CF patients. In the article, it was proven that there existed an interaction between the staphylococcal protein A (SpA) from S. aureus filtrates (SaF, a bacterial supernatant of S. aureus), and an exopolysaccharide (Psl) of P. aeruginosa. This interaction lead to the aggregation and increased resistance to tobramycin¬ – an antibiotic used to eradicate P. aeruginosa, to prevent chronic colonization of the bacteria. The study conducted involved 7 samples of P. aeruginosa that were taken from individuals who underwent successful eradication treatment, and 7 samples from individuals who still had persistent isolates. These P. aeruginosa samples were cultured for 24 hours in media. When SaF was added to the overnight preformed biofilms, the eradicated isolates were not affected by the SaF; however, the persistent isolates showed significant reduction is surface coverage due to densely packed cellular aggregation, without affecting the biomass or viability of persistent isolates. The

The most common pathogenic strains that cause wound infection is Staphylococcus aureus (35%), Escherichia coli (15%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (13%) and other bacteria (37%) (Amit Kumar Gupta et al., 2015). In another study, Staphylococcus aureus has been reported as the major cause of wound infection with (24.2%), followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa (21.4 %), Escherichia coli (14.8 %) and another different organism (39.6 %) (Jyoti Sangwan et al., 2016). Staphylococcus aureus (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is gram positive bacteria and can be a lethally opportunistic pathogen or human commensal, it is one of the leading organisms causing a variety of hospital-acquired infection and community acquired infection (Brown et al., 2014). S. aureus has

Research, pg.9-12 10. Materials, pg.13 11. Procedure, pg.14 12. Data & Analysis, pg.15-16 13. Results & Conclusion, pg.17 14.

The antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of S. aureus (MRAS and MSSA) isolates to various antibiotics are presented in Table 1. All S. aureus isolates were susceptible to vancomycin. Quinupristin-dalfopristin, linezolid and minocycline with resistance rates of 1.1%,

In particular, S. aureus isolates of concern to the medical community are methicillin-sensitive and methicillin-resistant strains, which are also persistent colonizers. Increased risk factors for S. aureus infection are persistent colonization, patients with type 1 diabetes, intravenous drug users, patients undergoing hemodialysis, surgical patients, and patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Patients with qualitative or quantitative defects in leukocyte function are also at

Osteomyelitis is a broad and debilitating disease typically triggered by a variety of conditions. Osteomyelitis starts off as inflammation seen within bone and bone marrow that can quickly progress into a large, subclassified infection. The length of time the infection has been present in the body and whether or not there is a pus formation or increased density among the infected bone is commonly used to classify severity. Pyrogenic bacteria or mycobacteria systematically attack the route and anatomic location of the infection evolving acute conditions into chronic ones. “Staphylococcus Aureus is a gram-positive, round shaped, non-mobile cocci typically found in clusters inside these wounds. Staphylococcus Aureus is one of the most common causes of infections after injury or surgery and affects nearly 500,000 patients in hospitals each year. Staphylococcus Aureus belongs to the family Staphylcoccaceae and survives by affecting all known mammalian species including humans” (www.news-medical.net). Osteomyelitis can start in one area of the body while spreading through the blood stream into other bone regions. Typical treatment options for Osteomyelitis includes antibiotics, removal of

This project involves analyzing persister cells—slow-growing, multi-drug tolerant populations of bacteria—to expand the current knowledge of the formation and persistence of chronic biofilm infections associated with total joint arthroplasties (TJAs). Currently, popular bone cements—poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) spacers and calcium sulfate (CaSO4) beads—are impregnated with antibiotics, and placed at the surgical site to kill these primary infections. It is known that antibiotics such as tobramycin and vancomycin inhibit the metabolic activity of in vitro lawn biofilms of these clinical species. However, persister cells slowly arise after long-term, local antibiotic elution at levels well above measured minimum inhibitory

First of all, what causes S. aureus to survive is the genetic discovery that was made. An experiment was done with several different strains of S. aureus to see similarities and differences. Genetic variation among strains that had the most abundant disease causing clonal lineages of S. aureus, with 332 ORFs absent in one strain compared to a reference strain COL was identified. Also 2,198 (78%) of the 2,817 ORFs represented on the DNA microarray were present in all S. aureus strains tested. The results suggested that these genes were essential for S. aureus cell maintenance. Some of these 2,198 genes encoded known virulence factors. This gave reason to suggest these genes were a critical role for these proteins in staphylococcal survival and pathogenesis. (Fitz 2001)

The release of two exotoxins from certain strains of S. aureus can lead to Staphylococcal scaled skin syndrome (SSSS), which is characterized by blistering skin. Invasion into the body can lead to more serious health problems including pneumonia (a frequent complication of influenza), mastitis, phlebitis (inflammation of the veins), meningitis, and urinary tract infections. If the bacterium is allowed to colonize even deeper tissues more serious conditions such as osteomyelitis and endocarditis may result. The most serious consequences of these deeper tissue infections occur when the bacterium invades the bloodstream leading to septic shock and possibly death.