AUTHOR=Ogura Kohei , Furuya Hiroka , Takahashi Natsuki , Shibata Kana , Endo Maho , Watanabe Shinya , Cui Longzhu , Miyoshi-Akiyama Tohru , Okamoto Shigefumi , Ogai Kazuhiro , Sugama Junko 

TITLE=Interspecies Regulation Between Staphylococcus caprae and Staphylococcus aureus Colonized on Healed Skin After Injury

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.818398

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2022.818398

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Staphylococcus</italic> spp. colonize commensally on the human skin. Some commensal coagulase-negative staphylococci and <italic>Staphylococcus aureus</italic> are also involved in nosocomial infections. Bacteria were collected from skin healed from pressure injury (PI). After the collection time points, some patients suffered from recurrent PI (RPI). This study analyzed the characteristics of <italic>Staphylococcus</italic> spp. on healed skin before recurrence between healed skin that suffered from RPI within 6 weeks (RPI group) and healed skin that did not suffer within the duration (non-RPI group) by <italic>Staphylococcus</italic> spp.-specific sequencing. Of the seven patients in the RPI group, two were dominated by <italic>S. aureus</italic> and four by <italic>Staphylococcus caprae</italic>, coagulase-negative human commensal staphylococci in the RPI group. Using mouse models, both <italic>S. caprae</italic> and <italic>S. aureus</italic>, but not <italic>Staphylococcus epidermidis</italic>, colonized on skin healed from injury at significantly higher rates than normal skin. Although subcutaneous injection of <italic>S. caprae</italic> did not induce lesion formation, the bacterium exhibited high hemolytic activity on human red blood cells. Lesion formation by subcutaneous injection of <italic>S. aureus</italic> was significantly suppressed in the presence of <italic>S. caprae</italic>. The hemolytic activity of rabbit blood cells of <italic>S. aureus</italic> was suppressed by <italic>S. caprae</italic>, whereas the hemolytic activity of <italic>S. caprae</italic> was dramatically suppressed by <italic>S. aureus</italic>. Data indicated that each of the two <italic>Staphylococcus</italic> spp. suppresses the pathogenicity of the other and that the imbalance between the two is associated with RPI.</p>