Anti-biofilm Activity as a Health Issue

Abstract

The formation and persistence of surface-attached microbial communities, known as biofilms, are responsible for 75% of human microbial infections (National Institutes of Health). Biofilm lifestyle confers several advantages to the pathogens, notably during the colonization process of medical devices and/or patients' organs. In addition, sessile bacteria have a high tolerance to exogenous stress including anti-infectious agents. Biofilms are highly competitive communities and some microorganisms exhibit anti-biofilm capacities such as bacterial growth inhibition, exclusion or competition, which enable them to acquire advantages and become dominant. The deciphering and control of anti-biofilm properties represent future challenges in human infection control. The aim of this review is to compare and discuss the mechanisms of natural bacterial anti-biofilm strategies/mechanisms recently identified in pathogenic, commensal and probiotic bacteria and the main synthetic strategies used in clinical practice, particularly for catheter-related infections.

Keywords: anti-biofilm; biofilm; lock solution; pathogens; probiotics.

FIGURE 1

Four-hour-old biofilm of Klebsiella pneumoniae. (A) scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation of the biofilm formed on Thermanox slide performed as previously described (Goncalves et al., 2014). (B) Confocal microscopic observations of the biofilm (green) formed onto A549 pulmonary cell monolayer stained with Phalloidin (red) and DAPI (blue). Observations were performed as previously described (Marquès et al., 2015). (C) Relative percentage of the most frequent micro-organisms associated with nosocomial infections in France (adapted from RAISIN, 2015).

FIGURE 2

Schematic representation of the impact of bacterial anti-biofilm activities on microbe-surface interactions and on microbe-microbe interactions.