Co-immobilization of Ciprofloxacin and Chlorhexidine as a Broad-Spectrum Antimicrobial Dual-Drug Coating for Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC)-Based Endotracheal Tubes.

The endotracheal tube (ETT) affords support for intubated patients, but the increasing incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is jeopardizing its application. ETT surfaces promote (poly)microbial colonization and biofilm formation, with a heavy burden for VAP. Devising safe, broad-spectrum antimicrobial materials to tackle the ETT bioburden is needful.

Antimicrobial materials for endotracheal tubes: A review on the last two decades of technological progress.

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is an unresolved problem in nosocomial settings, remaining consistently associated with a lack of treatment, high mortality, and prolonged hospital stay. The endotracheal tube (ETT) is the major culprit for VAP development owing to its early surface microbial colonization and biofilm formation by multiple pathogens, both critical events for VAP pathogenesis and relapses. To combat this matter, gradual research on antimicrobial ETT surface coating/modification approaches has been made.

Discerning the role of polymicrobial biofilms in the ascent, prevalence, and extent of heteroresistance in clinical practice.

Antimicrobial therapy is facing a worrisome and underappreciated challenge, the phenomenon of heteroresistance (HR). HR has been gradually documented in clinically relevant pathogens (e.g.

Unraveling and Communication in Coinfection Scenarios: Insights Through Network Analysis.

Modern medicine is currently facing huge setbacks concerning infection therapeutics as microorganisms are consistently knocking down every antimicrobial wall set before them. The situation becomes more worrying when taking into account that, in both environmental and disease scenarios, microorganisms present themselves as biofilm communities that are often polymicrobial. This comprises a competitive advantage, with interactions between different species altering host responses, antimicrobial effectiveness, microbial pathogenesis and virulence, usually augmenting the severity of the infection and contributing for the recalcitrance towards conventional therapy.

Minimum information guideline for spectrophotometric and fluorometric methods to assess biofilm formation in microplates.

The lack of reproducibility of published studies is one of the major issues facing the scientific community, and the field of biofilm microbiology has been no exception. One effective strategy against this multifaceted problem is the use of minimum information guidelines. This strategy provides a guide for authors and reviewers on the necessary information that a manuscript should include for the experiments in a study to be clearly interpreted and independently reproduced.

Antimicrobial resistance three ways: healthcare crisis, major concepts and the relevance of biofilms.

Worldwide, infections are resuming their role as highly effective killing diseases, as current treatments are failing to respond to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The social and economic burden of AMR seems ever rising, with health- and research-related organizations rushing to collaborate on a worldwide scale to find effective solutions. Resistant bacteria are spreading even in first-world nations, being found not only in healthcare-related settings, but also in food and in the environment.

Quantitative assessment of individual populations within polymicrobial biofilms.

Selecting appropriate tools providing reliable quantitative measures of individual populations in biofilms is critical as we now recognize their true polymicrobial and heterogeneous nature. Here, plate count, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (q-PCR) and peptide nucleic acid probe-fluorescence in situ hybridization (PNA-FISH) were employed to quantitate cystic fibrosis multispecies biofilms. Growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Inquilinus limosus and Dolosigranulum pigrum was assessed in dual- and triple-species consortia under oxygen and antibiotic stress.

Developing a model for cystic fibrosis sociomicrobiology based on antibiotic and environmental stress.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) infections are invariably biofilm-mediated and polymicrobial, being safe to assume that a myriad of factors affects the sociomicrobiology within the CF infection site and modulate the CF community dynamics, by shaping their social activities, overall functions, virulence, ultimately affecting disease outcome. This work aimed to assess changes in the dynamics (particularly on the microbial composition) of dual-/three-species biofilms involving CF-classical (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and unusual species (Inquilinus limosus and Dolosigranulum pigrum), according to variable oxygen conditions and antibiotic exposure. Low fluctuations in biofilm compositions were observed across distinct oxygen environments, with dual-species biofilms exhibiting similar relative proportions and P.

Insights into Cystic Fibrosis Polymicrobial Consortia: The Role of Species Interactions in Biofilm Development, Phenotype, and Response to In-Use Antibiotics.

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) airways disease involves complex polymicrobial infections where different bacterial species can interact and influence each other and/or even interfere with the whole community. To gain insights into the role that interactions between in co-culture with , and may play in infection, the reciprocal effect during biofilm formation and the response of dual biofilms toward ciprofloxacin under atmospheres with different oxygen availabilities were evaluated. Biofilm formation kinetics showed that the growth of , and was disturbed in the presence of , under both aerobic and anaerobic environments.

Polymicrobial Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia: Fighting In Vitro Candida albicans-Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilms with Antifungal-Antibacterial Combination Therapy.

The polymicrobial nature of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is now evident, with mixed bacterial-fungal biofilms colonizing the VAP endotracheal tube (ETT) surface. The microbial interplay within this infection may contribute for enhanced pathogenesis and exert impact towards antimicrobial therapy. Consequently, the high mortality/morbidity rates associated to VAP and the worldwide increase in antibiotic resistance has promoted the search for novel therapeutic strategies to fight VAP polymicrobial infections.

Discriminating typical and atypical cystic fibrosis-related bacteria by multiplex PNA-FISH.

This study aims to report the development of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes to specifically detect the cystic fibrosis (CF)-associated traditional and atypical species Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Inquilinus limosus, respectively. PNA probes were designed in silico, developed and tested in smears prepared in phosphate-buffer saline (PBS), and in artificial sputum medium (ASM). A multiplex fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) approach using the designed probes was further validated in artificially contaminated clinical sputum samples and also applied in polymicrobial 24 h-old biofilms involving P.

The cystic fibrosis microbiome in an ecological perspective and its impact in antibiotic therapy.

The recent focus on the cystic fibrosis (CF) complex microbiome has led to the recognition that the microbes can interact between them and with the host immune system, affecting the disease progression and treatment routes. Although the main focus remains on the interactions between traditional pathogens, growing evidence supports the contribution and the role of emergent species. Understanding the mechanisms and the biological effects involved in polymicrobial interactions may be the key to improve effective therapies and also to define new strategies for disease control.

Emergent bacteria in cystic fibrosis: in vitro biofilm formation and resilience under variable oxygen conditions.

Concurrent to conventional bacterial pathogens, unusual microbes are emerging from cystic fibrosis (CF) airways. Nonetheless, little is known about the contribution of these newly microbes to the resilience of CF-associated biofilms, particularly under variable-oxygen concentrations that are known to occur in vivo in the mucus of CF patients. Two CF-emergent bacterial species, Inquilinus limosus and Dolosigranulum pigrum, and the major pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa were studied in terms of biofilm development and antibiotic susceptibilities under in vitro atmospheres with different oxygen availabilities.

Microbiome in cystic fibrosis: Shaping polymicrobial interactions for advances in antibiotic therapy.

Recent molecular methodologies have demonstrated a complex microbial ecosystem in cystic fibrosis (CF) airways, with a wide array of uncommon microorganisms co-existing with the traditional pathogens. Although there are lines of evidence supporting the contribution of some of those emergent species for lung disease chronicity, clinical significance remains uncertain for most cases. A possible contribution for disease is likely to be related with the dynamic interactions established between microorganisms within the microbial community and with the host.

Minimum information about a biofilm experiment (MIABiE): standards for reporting experiments and data on sessile microbial communities living at interfaces.

The minimum information about a biofilm experiment (MIABiE) initiative has arisen from the need to find an adequate and scientifically sound way to control the quality of the documentation accompanying the public deposition of biofilm-related data, particularly those obtained using high-throughput devices and techniques. Thereby, the MIABiE consortium has initiated the identification and organization of a set of modules containing the minimum information that needs to be reported to guarantee the interpretability and independent verification of experimental results and their integration with knowledge coming from other fields. MIABiE does not intend to propose specific standards on how biofilms experiments should be performed, because it is acknowledged that specific research questions require specific conditions which may deviate from any standardization.

Antibiotic resistance of mixed biofilms in cystic fibrosis: impact of emerging microorganisms on treatment of infection.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder associated with multispecies infections where interactions between classical and newly identified bacteria might be crucial to understanding the persistent colonisation in CF lungs. This study investigated the interactions between two emerging species, Inquilinus limosus and Dolosigranulum pigrum, and the conventional CF pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa by evaluating the ability to develop biofilms of mixed populations and then studying their susceptibility patterns to eight different antimicrobials. Monospecies biofilms formed by I.

Effect of antimicrobial residues on early adhesion and biofilm formation by wild-type and benzalkonium chloride-adapted Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Antimicrobial residue deposition can change the physico-chemical properties of bacteria and surfaces and thus promote or impair bacterial adhesion. This study focuses on benzalkonium chloride (BC) deposition on polystyrene (PS) surfaces and the influence of this conditioning film on the physico-chemical properties of PS and on early adhesion and biofilm formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa wild-type and its laboratory BC-adapted strain. The latter readily acquired the ability to grow in BC, and also exhibited physico-chemical surface changes.

Adaptive response of single and binary Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli biofilms to benzalkonium chloride.

The main goal of this work was to examine whether the continuous exposure of single and binary P. aeruginosa and E. coli biofilms to sub-lethal benzalkonium chloride (BC) doses can induce adaptive response of bacteria.

Role of planktonic and sessile extracellular metabolic byproducts on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli intra and interspecies relationships.

Bacterial species are found primarily as residents of complex surface-associated communities, known as biofilms. Although these structures prevail in nature, bacteria still exist in planktonic lifestyle and differ from those in morphology, physiology, and metabolism. This study aimed to investigate the influence of physiological states of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli in cell-to-cell interactions.

Time to "go large" on biofilm research: advantages of an omics approach.

In nature, the biofilm mode of life is of great importance in the cell cycle for many microorganisms. Perhaps because of biofilm complexity and variability, the characterization of a given microbial system, in terms of biofilm formation potential, structure and associated physiological activity, in a large-scale, standardized and systematic manner has been hindered by the absence of high-throughput methods. This outlook is now starting to change as new methods involving the utilization of microtiter-plates and automated spectrophotometry and microscopy systems are being developed to perform large-scale testing of microbial biofilms.