Glycerol monolaurate (GML) is a naturally occurring surfactant that is used widely as an emulsifier in the food and cosmetics industries and is generally regarded as lacking in important biological activities. The recent observation that it inhibits the production of staphylococcal toxic shock toxin-i (P. M. Schlievert, J. R. Deringer, M. H. Kim, S. J. Projan, and R P. Novick, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 36:626-631, 1992) is therefore rather surprising and raises the interesting question of how such a compound might interact with cells. In this report, we show that GML inhibits the synthesis of most staphylococcal toxins and other exoproteins and that it does so at the level of transcription. We find that GML blocks the induction but not the constitutive synthesis of ,3-lactamase, suggesting that it acts by interfering with signal transduction.

This original prospective multicentre study highlights stark differences in European MRSA epidemiology compared with the USA, and that the USA300 CA-MRSA clone is not predominant among community-infected patients in Europe.

Some strains of the coagulase-negative Staphylococcus lugdunensis produce a synergistic hemolytic activity (SLUSH), phenotypically similar to the delta-hemolysin of S. aureus. Reverse-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography of supernatants from S. lugdunensis 307 yielded three late-eluting peaks of 3.5 kDa with synergistic hemolytic activity. A degenerate oligonucleotide probe was designed from partial amino acid sequences of the 23-amino-acid (aa) tryptic fragments from one of the three peaks and hybridized to a single 2.8-kb HindIII chromosomal fragment. The relevant portion of this fragment was cloned by PCR, and sequencing showed the presence of three related open reading frames (ORFs), SLUSH-A, SLUSH-B, and SLUSH-C, preceded by an unrelated short potentially coding sequence (ORF-X), cotranscribed on a polycistronic 838-nucleotide mRNA. The amino acid sequences of the peptides from the three peaks align perfectly with the predicted sequences from the three SLUSH ORFs (peak I ‫؍‬ SLUSH-B; peak II ‫؍‬ SLUSH-C; peak III ‫؍‬ SLUSH-A). These three peptides are closely related (amino acid homology, >76%) and do not show significant homology to S. aureus delta-hemolysin but do resemble a Salmonella typhimurium invasin and the "gonococcal growth inhibitor," a bacteriocin secreted by Staphylococcus haemolyticus. The predicted ORF-X gene product is a 24-aa peptide with no homology to the SLUSH peptides.

The rate of infectious complications following shunt implantations at the Pierre Wertheimer Hospital was 6.4% in 1992-1994. In order to improve this infection rate, new recommendations for surgery were applied and a new type of valve was used. The effects of these measures after a 1-year follow-up were analyzed in 70 patients. The rate of infection was zero, 2.8, and 4.3% at 2, 6, and 12 months, respectively. A case-control study did not reveal any significant risk factor among the patient and surgical factors analyzed.

Sequences related to the Staphylococcus aureus accessory gene regulator (agr) were demonstrated in S. lugdunensis by Southern blot analysis of 13 strains and sequencing of the S. lugdunensis agr-like locus (agr-sl). Northern blot analysis of cellular RNA revealed the presence of a transcript having homology with the agr-P3 transcript (RNAIII) for three of the six strains tested. The three strains containing this transcript produce a hemolysin with phenotypic properties similar to that of S. aureus delta-hemolysin. Nevertheless, unlike agr-P3 from S. aureus, agr-sl does not encode any potential peptide homologous to S. aureus delta-hemolysin, suggesting that the hemolytic activity detected in S. lugdunensis is encoded elsewhere and may be controlled by agr-sl.