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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Microbial Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1468709

Cutibacterium acnes strains associated with bone prosthesis infections cannot evade the host immune system

Provisionally accepted
Léa THORAVAL Léa THORAVAL 1Min Tang-Fichaux Min Tang-Fichaux 1GUILLAUME Christine GUILLAUME Christine 1Jennifer VARIN SIMON Jennifer VARIN SIMON 1Claire Dumortier Claire Dumortier 1Johan SERGHERAERT Johan SERGHERAERT 1,2Fabien Lamret Fabien Lamret 1Mélanie Bonhomme Mélanie Bonhomme 3Frederic LAURENT Frederic LAURENT 3Jérôme JOSSE Jérôme JOSSE 3Sophie C Gangloff Sophie C Gangloff 1Céline Mongaret Céline Mongaret 1Fany Reffuveille Fany Reffuveille 1Frédéric Velard Frédéric Velard 1*
  • 1 Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
  • 2 UFR Odontologie, Faculté Dentaire de Reims, Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne, Reims, Champagne-Ardenne, France
  • 3 UMR5308 Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie (CIRI), Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Introduction: Cutibacterium acnes is a commensal skin bacterium that is involved in bone prosthesis infections (BPIs) and presents low-grade clinical symptoms. C. acnes has been thought to escape the immune system at bone sites.Material and methods: Our study was carried out on a laboratory strain and two BPI-related clinical strains, one of which surprisingly induced clinical symptoms of inflammation in the patient. We investigated the ability of these C. acnes strains to trigger in vitro human primary neutrophils (PMN) response through inflammatory mediators measurements (antibody-arrays, ELISA, RT-qPCR, zymography) and activation status assessment (flow cytometry), and to induce in vivo PMN recruitment from the bloodstream in mice air-pouch model. PMN-mediated inflammation was also studied in an original in vitro model mimetic of an infected bone site that combine titanium alloy, primary human osteoblast, primary human neutrophil and C. acnes strains.Results: We demonstrated for the first time that both C. acnes planktonic and biofilm cultures, triggered an effective immune response by neutrophils in vitro and their recruitment in vivo. This host response was enhanced when using a strain from a patient with inflammatory signs. In an original infected prosthesis mimetic model, osteoblasts and neutrophils were able to detect C. acnes, but their response to the clinical C. acnes inflammatory strain decreased. Conclusion: This work provides the first evidence showing that the immune cell response to pathogenic C. acnes may be tuned by nonimmune cells at the infected site, such as osteoblasts, which may promote bacterial persistence.

    Keywords: Inflammation, Cutibacterium acnes, Biofilm, Bone and joint infection, human primary neutrophils

    Received: 22 Jul 2024; Accepted: 31 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 THORAVAL, Tang-Fichaux, Christine, VARIN SIMON, Dumortier, SERGHERAERT, Lamret, Bonhomme, LAURENT, JOSSE, Gangloff, Mongaret, Reffuveille and Velard. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Frédéric Velard, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France

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