ABSTRACT: A comprehensive study of the population dynamics of Hospital-Acquired MRSA using genomic epidemiology within a healthcare facility in Saudi Arabia.
Project description:A comprehensive study of the population dynamics of Hospital-Acquired MRSA using genomic epidemiology within a healthcare facility in Saudi Arabia
| PRJEB81867 | ENA
Project description:A genomic epidemiology study of hospital-acquired Acinetobacter baumannii population dynamics within healthcare facilities in Saudi Arabia.
Project description:Staphylococcus aureus can cause a broad spectrum of diseases that vary widely in clinical presentation and disease severity[121]. Methicillin-Resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains first described in the 1960’s[122] were hospital acquired (HA MRSA), however in the 1990’s, community-associated MRSA strains (CA MRSA) were identified and are considered to be more virulent[16]. Therapeutics and management of MRSA focuses on novel antibacterials and vaccines targeting virulence factors. To date no clinical trials for vaccines have succeeded[123] due to the poor understanding of the pathogenic mechanisms exhibited by S.aureus.We investigated the differential gene expression of four clinical MRSA strains in vitro, belonging to HA and CA MRSA, at the stationary and exponential growth phases, using RNA-seq on the Ion torrent next generation sequencing platform. This study reveals the high diversity of virulence trait expression among MRSA strains within strains as well as between different growth phases, and also suggests potential factors other than PVL that contributes to enhanced virulence in CA MRSA
2020-01-07 | GSE70636 | GEO
Project description:WGS of HA-MRSA isolates from Saudi Arabia
Project description:Staphylococcus aureus can cause serious skin, respiratory, and other life-threatening invasive infections in humans, and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) strains have been acquiring increasing antibiotic resistance. While MRSA was once mainly considered a hospital-acquired infection, the emergence of new strains, some of which are pandemic, has resulted in community-acquired MRSA infections that often present as serious skin infections in otherwise healthy individuals. Accordingly, defining the mechanisms that govern the activation and regulation of the immune response to MRSA is clinically important and could lead to the discovery of much needed rational targets for therapeutic intervention. Because the cytokine thymic stromal lymphopoetin (TSLP) is highly expressed by keratinocytes of the skin3, we investigated its role in host-defense against MRSA. Here we demonstrate that TSLP acts on neutrophils to increase their killing of MRSA. In particular, we show that both mouse and human neutrophils express functional TSLP receptors. Strikingly, TSLP enhances mouse neutrophil killing of MRSA in both an in vitro whole blood killing assay and an in vivo skin infection model. Similarly, TSLP acts directly on purified human blood neutrophils to reduce MRSA burden. Unexpectedly, we demonstrate that TSLP mediates these effects both in vivo and in vitro by engaging the complement C5 system. Thus, TSLP increases MRSA killing in a neutrophil- and complement-dependent manner, revealing a key connection between TSLP and the innate complement system, with potentially important therapeutic implications for control of MRSA infection.
