Biofilms harbour Clostridioides difficile, serving as a reservoir for recurrent infection

Abstract

C. difficile infection (CDI) is a worldwide healthcare problem with ~30% of cases failing primary therapy, placing a burden on healthcare systems and increasing patient morbidity. We have little understanding of why these therapies fail. Here, we use a clinically validated in vitro gut model to assess the contribution of biofilms towards recurrent disease and to investigate biofilm microbiota-C. difficile interactions. Initial experiments show that C. difficile cells became associated with the colonic biofilm microbiota and are not depleted by vancomycin or faecal microbiota transplant therapies. We observe that transferring biofilm encased C. difficile cells into a C. difficile naïve but CDI susceptible model induces CDI. Members of the biofilm community can impact C. difficile biofilm formation by acting either antagonistically or synergistically. We highlight the importance of biofilms as a reservoir for C. difficile, which can be a cause for recurrent infections.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Normington, C Moura, IB https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3019-7196 Byrant, JA Ewin, DJ Clark, EV Kettle, MJ Harris, HC Spittal, W Davis, G https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2826-0897 Henn, MR Ford, CB Wilcox, MH Buckley, AM https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2790-0717
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 10 December 2020 Published (online): 5 February 2021 Published: 5 February 2021
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number Seres Therapeutics Inc NO EXT REF GIVEN Teresa Rosenbaum Golden Charitable Trust A1332 Seres Therapeutics Inc Not Known
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	09 Feb 2021 12:01
Last Modified:	08 Jan 2025 12:53
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41522-021-00184-w
Related URLs:	Author Dataset
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:170812