Occurrence of Staphylococcus lugdunensis in consecutive clinical cultures and relationship of isolation to infection

Abstract

Consecutive record review over a 63-month period revealed 229 Staphylococcus lugdunensis isolates, or 10.1% of the staphylococcal species that were not Staphylococcus aureus or Staphylococcus epidermidis. A total of 155 S. lugdunensis specimens were isolated from sites over the entire bodies of the 143 patients studied. The most common clinical diagnoses were skin and skin structure infections (55.4%) and blood and vascular catheter infections (17.4%). For 40% of the reviewed specimens, S. lugdunensis was the sole agent isolated, and for 60% of specimens, S. lugdunensis was isolated as part of mixed flora. In only 15.4% of clinically reviewed specimens was S. lugdunensis clearly a culture contaminant or colonizing organism. The pattern of human infection identified in this study emphasizes the predominance of ski'n and soft tissue S. lugdunensis infections over deep serious infections such as endocarditis, peritonitis, infected hip prosthesis, and osteomyelitis and vascular-associated infections. S. lugdunensis should be included along with S. epidermidis, Staphylococcus haemolyticus, and Staphylococcus saprophyticus as a coagulase-negative species of Staphylococcus pathogenic for humans.

Staphylococcus lugdunensis: clinical spectrum, antibiotic susceptibility, and phenotypic and genotypic patterns of 39 isolates

“…In the present study, S. lugdunensis was the only pathogen isolated from 74% of non-bacteraemic patients, compared to 81% in the study by Vandenesch et al [16] and 39% in the study by Herchline and Ayers [15]. The only exceptions were cultures from leg ulcers, where S. lugdunensis was found frequently with other bacteria, and probably represented colonisation.…”

“…S. lugdunensis has been shown to cause meningitis secondary to ventriculo-peritoneal shunt infections, often with more extensive symptoms than those caused by other CoNS [7][8][9]. In addition, S. lugdunensis has been isolated from infections such as osteomyelitis [4,[10][11][12], pros-thetic joint infections [12,13], septic arthritis [14], skin and post-surgical wound infections [15,16], breast abscesses [17][18][19] and peritonitis associated with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis [20].…”

Characterization of AtlL, a bifunctional autolysin ofStaphylococcus lugdunensiswithN-acetylglucosaminidase andN-acetylmuramoyl-l-alanine amidase activities

“…Staphylococcus lugdunensis is a coagulase-negative staphylococcus that has emerged as a recognized important human pathogen (Herchline & Ayers, 1991), and behaves much like Staphylococcus aureus in terms of virulence, tissue destruction, and clinical course (Vandenesch et al, 1993;Hellbacher et al, 2006;Frank et al, 2008). Bacterial peptidoglycan hydrolases (PGH) of several staphylococcal species (Oshida et al, 1995;Heilmann et al, 1997;Hell et al, 1998;Allignet et al, 2001;Biswas et al, 2006;Yokoi et al, 2008) and other Gram-positive low G1C % bacteria (Bacillus subtilis and Clostridium difficile) (Smith et al, 2000;Dhalluin et al, 2005) have been described.…”

A von Willebrand factor-binding protein from Staphylococcus lugdunensis

“…Staphylococcus lugdunensis is a coagulase-negative staphylococcal species (CoNS) that has been reported to cause serious human infections such as endocarditis, septicemia and osteomyelitis as well as less severe infections, e.g. skin infections [1][2][3]. In a mouse abscess model, S. lugdunensis was shown to posses a high pathogenic potential relative to some other CoNS [4].…”