Antibiotic Treatment and Age Are Associated With Staphylococcus aureus Carriage Profiles During Persistence in the Airways of Cystic Fibrosis Patients

Corinna Westphal; Dennis Görlich; Stefanie Kampmeier; Susann Herzog; Nadja Braun; Carina Hitschke; Alexander Mellmann; Georg Peters; Barbara C Kahl; Staphylococcal CF Study Group

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.00230

Antibiotic Treatment and Age Are Associated With Staphylococcus aureus Carriage Profiles During Persistence in the Airways of Cystic Fibrosis Patients

Front Microbiol. 2020 Feb 26:11:230. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.00230. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Corinna Westphal¹, Dennis Görlich², Stefanie Kampmeier³, Susann Herzog¹, Nadja Braun¹, Carina Hitschke¹, Alexander Mellmann³, Georg Peters¹, Barbara C Kahl¹; Staphylococcal CF Study Group

Collaborators

Staphylococcal CF Study Group:
Sibylle Junge, Burkhard Tümmler, Helmut Ellermunter, Angelika Dübbers, Peter Küster, Manfred Ballmann, Cordula Koerner-Rettberg, Jörg Große-Onnebrink, Eberhardt Heuer, Wolfgang Sextro, Jochen G, Jutta Hammermann, Ute Graepler-Mainka, Doris Staab, Bettina Wollschläger, Antje Schuster, Friedrich-Karl Tegtmeyer, Sivagurunathan Sutharsan, Alexandra Wald

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Medical Microbiology, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany.
² Institute of Biostatistics and Clinical Research, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany.
³ Institute of Hygiene, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany.

Abstract

Background: Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most isolated pathogens from the airways of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. There is a lack of information about the clonal nature of S. aureus cultured from CF patients and their impact on disease. We hypothesized that patients would differ in their clinical status depending on S. aureus clonal carriage profiles during persistence.

Methods: During a 21-months prospective observational multicenter study (Junge et al., 2016), 3893 S. aureus isolates (nose, oropharynx, and sputa) were cultured from 183 CF patients (16 German centers, 1 Austrian center) and subjected to spa-sequence typing to assess clonality. Data were associated to lung function, age, gender, and antibiotic treatment by multivariate regression analysis.

Results: Two hundred and sixty-five different spa-types were determined with eight prevalent spa-types (isolated from more than 10 patients): t084, t091, t008, t015, t002 t012, t364, and t056. We observed different carriage profiles of spa-types during the study period: patients being positive with a prevalent spa-type, only one, a dominant or related spa-type/s. Patients with more antibiotic cycles were more likely to be positive for only one spa-type (p = 0.005), while older patients were more likely to have related (p = 0.006), or dominant spa-types (p = 0.026). Two percent of isolates were identified as methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and evidence of transmission of clones within centers was low.

Conclusion: There was a significant association of antibiotic therapy and age on S. aureus carriage profiles in CF patients indicating that antibiotic therapy prevents acquisition of new clones, while during aging of patients with persisting S. aureus, dominant clones were selected and mutations in the spa-repeat region accumulated.

Keywords: Staphylococcus aureus; airway infection; clonal lineages; cystic fibrosis; persistent infection; spa-typing.