TY - JOUR AU - Westphal, Corinna AU - Görlich, Dennis AU - Kampmeier, Stefanie AU - Herzog, Susann AU - Braun, Nadja AU - Hitschke, Carina AU - Mellmann, Alexander AU - Peters, Georg AU - Kahl, Barbara C. AU - , Staphylococcal CF Study Group AU - Junge., Sibylle AU - Tümmler., Burkhard AU - Ellermunter, Helmut AU - Dübbers, Angelika AU - Küster, Peter AU - Ballmann, Manfred AU - Koerner-Rettberg, Cordula AU - Große-Onnebrink, Jörg AU - Heuer, Eberhardt AU - Sextro, Wolfgang AU - G, Jochen AU - Hammermann, Jutta AU - Graepler-Mainka, Ute AU - Staab, Doris AU - Wollschläger, Bettina AU - Schuster, Antje AU - Tegtmeyer, Friedrich-Karl AU - Sutharsan, Sivagurunathan AU - Wald, Alexandra PY - 2020 M3 - Original Research TI - Antibiotic Treatment and Age Are Associated With Staphylococcus aureus Carriage Profiles During Persistence in the Airways of Cystic Fibrosis Patients JO - Frontiers in Microbiology UR - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00230 VL - 11 SN - 1664-302X N2 - BackgroundStaphylococcus aureus is one of the most isolated pathogens from the airways of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. There is a lack of information about the clonal nature of S. aureus cultured from CF patients and their impact on disease. We hypothesized that patients would differ in their clinical status depending on S. aureus clonal carriage profiles during persistence.MethodsDuring a 21-months prospective observational multicenter study (Junge et al., 2016), 3893 S. aureus isolates (nose, oropharynx, and sputa) were cultured from 183 CF patients (16 German centers, 1 Austrian center) and subjected to spa-sequence typing to assess clonality. Data were associated to lung function, age, gender, and antibiotic treatment by multivariate regression analysis.ResultsTwo hundred and sixty-five different spa-types were determined with eight prevalent spa-types (isolated from more than 10 patients): t084, t091, t008, t015, t002 t012, t364, and t056. We observed different carriage profiles of spa-types during the study period: patients being positive with a prevalent spa-type, only one, a dominant or related spa-type/s. Patients with more antibiotic cycles were more likely to be positive for only one spa-type (p = 0.005), while older patients were more likely to have related (p = 0.006), or dominant spa-types (p = 0.026). Two percent of isolates were identified as methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and evidence of transmission of clones within centers was low.ConclusionThere was a significant association of antibiotic therapy and age on S. aureus carriage profiles in CF patients indicating that antibiotic therapy prevents acquisition of new clones, while during aging of patients with persisting S. aureus, dominant clones were selected and mutations in the spa-repeat region accumulated. ER -