Staphylococcus aureus ST1 promotes persistent urinary tract infection by highly expressing the urease

作者：Kai Xu, Yanan Wang, Ying Jian, Tianchi Chen, Qian Liu, Hua Wang, Min Li, Lei He · 发表于：Frontiers in Microbiology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3389/fmicb.2023.1101754 · 被引用次数：26 · 研究领域：Urinary Tract Infections Management、Helicobacter pylori-related gastroenterology studies、Kidney Stones and Urolithiasis Treatments

Staphylococcus aureus (SA) is a relatively uncommon cause of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in the general population. Although rare, S. aureus- induced UTIs are prone to potentially life-threatening invasive infections such as bacteremia. To investigate the molecular epidemiology, phenotypic characteristics, and pathophysiology of S. aureus- induced UTIs, we analyzed non-repetitive 4,405 S. aureus isolates collected from various clinical sources from 2008 to 2020 from a general hospital in Shanghai, China. Among these, 193 isolates (4.38%) were cultivated from the midstream urine specimens. Epidemiological analysis showed UTI-derived ST1 (UTI-ST1) and UTI-ST5 are the primary sequence types of UTI-SA. Furthermore, we randomly selected 10 isolates from each of the UTI-ST1, non-UTI-ST1 (nUTI-ST1), and UTI-ST5 groups to characterize their in vitro and in vivo phenotypes. The in vitro phenotypic assays revealed that UTI-ST1 exhibits an obvious decline in hemolysis of human red blood cells and increased biofilm and adhesion in the urea-supplemented medium, compared to the medium without urea, while UTI-ST5 and nUTI-ST1 did not show significant differences between the biofilm-forming and adhesion abilities. In addition, the UTI-ST1 displayed intense urease activities by highly expressing urease genes, indicating the potential role of urease in UTI-ST1 survival and persistence. Furthermore, in vitro virulence assays using the UTI-ST1 ureC mutant showed no significant difference in ...