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Time for biocide stewardship?

Nature Microbiology volume 4, pages 732–733 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — We wish to comment on the article by Lee et al.1 recently published in Nature Microbiology. We welcome this important work emphasizing the global spread of pathogenic multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus epidermidis, but wish to highlight some critical findings derived from the deposited genomic data, which have been partially reported in the Supplementary Information (Supplementary Table 1, sheet D) but not discussed in the article.

The study by Lee et al.1 supports the concerns raised in numerous smaller-scale and local studies that S. epidermidis is a dominant reservoir of multidrug-resistance genes2. The authors’ main focus is the prevalence of rpoB, associated with resistance to rifampicin — an antibiotic widely used in medical devices. We wish to draw the reader’s attention to the high carriage of biocide resistance genes, as well as heavy-metal resistance in association with staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) elements in hospital-adapted, multidrug-resistant S. epidermidis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Roxana Zamudio & Marco R. Oggioni

  2. Department of Medical Microbiology, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

    Ian M. Gould

  3. School of Medicine, Medical Sciences & Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

    Karolin Hijazi

Authors
  1. Roxana Zamudio
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  2. Marco R. Oggioni
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  3. Ian M. Gould
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  4. Karolin Hijazi
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Correspondence to Karolin Hijazi.

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Zamudio, R., Oggioni, M.R., Gould, I.M. et al. Time for biocide stewardship?. Nat Microbiol 4, 732–733 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0360-6

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