About this Research Topic

Background

Bone and joint infections (BJI) are one of the most difficult-to-treat bacterial infectious diseases. Its management is complex, and requires a multidisciplinary approach, from the diagnosis to the medico-surgical strategy.

At present, the diagnosis is easy for the acute forms, while most of the chronic infections remain undiagnosed or are discovered too late, leading to catastrophic clinical situations. Different medico-surgical strategies have been proposed, depending on the type of BJI, but the rate of success remains very disappointing, especially for patients with implant-associated BJI. In such patients, finding a way to cure the infection without adverse body reactions - such as organ failure, or loss of function- remains a challenge and deciding the treatment strategy for a particular patient with a specific form of BJI, is mainly based on experience, rather than precision medicine and patient's clinical health data.

In each specialty involved in such type of infections, such as microbiology, infectious disease and orthopaedic surgery, there are many novel findings that need to be incorporated in BJI treatment strategies. It is crucial to integrate these innovations in the global management and care of BJI patients, depending on the type of disease and update the current strategies.

We believe that the next years will be a pivotal moment to really change the burden of BJI. Indeed metagenomics, study on biofilm and intracellular persistence could change the understanding of the diseases. Non-common anti-infective agents, such as bacteriophages or lysins, are new ways to specifically target the pathogen, while particular implants and/or surgical techniques are crucial to limit the risk of organ failure or loss of function.

Taken together, these advances bring great potential for improving the prognosis of BJI by promoting innovation, and by developing this Research Topic we aim to collect manuscripts that cover all the specialties involved in the research, prognosis and treatment of BJIs, that are: microbiology, infectious diseases and orthopaedic surgery.

Keywords: osteomyelitis, prosthesis-joint infection, innovation, bone infection, joint infection, BJI

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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