Bacteriophages, viruses specific of bacteria, are receiving substantial attention as alternative antibacterial agents to treat bacteria frequently multi-resistant to antibiotics and/or able to form biofilms, such as staphylococci. The latter are responsible for very difficult to treat bone and joint infections (BJIs). In this context, our consortium aims to develop a production of therapeutic phages in accordance with the will of ANSM (French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products) to encourage the development of a national academic platform for phage therapy. We report the isolation and characterization of new anti-Staphylococcus phages as well as the evaluation of their activity on a collection of clinical strains of S. aureus (SA) and coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS) in order to assess their therapeutic potential. Seventeen phages were isolated from wastewater samples. Their identification was obtained by Illumina whole genome sequencing. To evaluate their spectrum of activity, 30 genetically characterized SA strains representative of the main genetic backgrounds as well as 32 strains belonging to 7 CNS species responsible for BJIs were included. The spot test technique, based on the determination of the Efficiency Of Plating ratio, was used (EOP, ratio between the phage titer obtained on a tested strain/titer on a reference strain, close to 1 if high sensitivity to the phage).Aim
Method
Bone and Joint Infections (BJIs) present with non-specific symptoms and can be caused by a wide variety of bacteria and fungi, including many anaerobes and microorganisms that can be challenging to culture or identify by traditional microbiological methods. Clinicians currently rely primarily on culture to identify the pathogen(s) responsible for infection. The BioFire® FilmArray® Bone and Joint Infection (BJI) Panel (BioFire Diagnostics, Salt Lake City, UT) was designed to detect 15 gram-positive (seven anaerobes), 14 gram-negative bacteria (one anaerobe), two yeast, and eight antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes from synovial fluid specimens in an hour. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of an Investigational Use Only (IUO) version of the BioFire BJI Panel (BBJIP) compared to conventional used as reference methods. In a monocentric study, leftover synovial fluid specimens were collected in a single institution including 4 hospitals and tested using conventional bacterial culture (Standard of Care (SoC)) according to routine procedures following French national recommendations. Specimen has been placed in a refrigerator (4°C) as soon as possible after collection and stored for less than or equal to 7 days before enrollment. Performance of the IUO version of the BBJIP was determined by comparison to SoC for species identification.Aim
Method
