Wannigama, D.L., Hurst, C., Monk, P.N. et al. (29 more authors) (2025) tesG expression as a potential clinical biomarker for chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa pulmonary biofilm infections. BMC Medicine, 23. 191. ISSN 1741-7015
Abstract
Background
Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in the lungs affect millions of children and adults worldwide. To our knowledge, no clinically validated prognostic biomarkers for chronic pulmonary P. aeruginosa infections exist. Therefore, this study aims to identify potential prognostic markers for chronic P. aeruginosa biofilm lung infections.
Methods
Here, we screened the expression of 11 P. aeruginosa regulatory genes (tesG, algD, lasR, lasA, lasB, pelB, phzF, rhlA, rsmY, rsmZ, and sagS) to identify associations between clinical status and chronic biofilm infection.
Results
RNA was extracted from 210 sputum samples from patients (n = 70) with chronic P. aeruginosa lung infections (mean age; 29.3–56.2 years; 33 female). Strong biofilm formation was correlated with prolonged hospital stays (212.2 days vs. 44.4 days) and increased mortality (46.2% (18)). Strong biofilm formation is associated with increased tesG expression (P = 0.001), influencing extended intensive care unit (P = 0.002) or hospitalisation stays (P = 0.001), pneumonia risk (P = 0.006), and mortality (P = 0.001). Notably, tesG expression is linked to the modulation of systemic and sputum inflammatory responses and predicts biofilm biomass.
Conclusions
This study provides the first clinical dataset of tesG expression levels as a predictive biomarker for chronic P. aeruginosa pulmonary infections.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, 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 licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Pseudomonas aeruginosa; Chronic infections; Chronic respiratory diseases; Clinical biomarker; Pulmonary biofilm; Respiratory infections; TesG expression; Humans; Biofilms; Pseudomonas aeruginosa; Female; Male; Pseudomonas Infections; Middle Aged; Adult; Biomarkers; Sputum; Bacterial Proteins; Chronic Disease |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Apr 2025 08:24 |
Last Modified: | 30 Apr 2025 08:24 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12916-025-04009-x |
Related URLs: | |
Sustainable Development Goals: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:225874 |