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Version 1
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Current Knowledge of Enterococcal Endocarditis: A Disease Lurking in Plain Sight to Health Provider
Version 1
: Received: 3 February 2024 / Approved: 5 February 2024 / Online: 5 February 2024 (03:43:43 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Nappi, F. Current Knowledge of Enterococcal Endocarditis: A Disease Lurking in Plain Sight of Health Providers. Pathogens 2024, 13, 235. Nappi, F. Current Knowledge of Enterococcal Endocarditis: A Disease Lurking in Plain Sight of Health Providers. Pathogens 2024, 13, 235.
Abstract
Enterococcus faecalis is a bacterial pathogen that can cause opportunistic infections. Studies indicate that initial biofilm formation plays a crucial regulatory role in these infections, as well as in colonising and maintaining the gastrointestinal tract as a commensal member of the microbiome of most land animals. It has long been thought that vegetation of endocarditis resulting from bacterial attachment to the endocardial endothelium requires some pre-existing tissue damage, and in animal models of experimental endocarditis, mechanical valve damage is typically induced by cardiac catheterisation preceding infection. This section reviews historical and contemporary animal model studies that demonstrate E. faecalis ability to colonise the undamaged endovascular endothelial surface directly and produce robust microcolony biofilms encapsulated within a bacterially derived extracellular matrix. This report reviews both previous and current animal model studies demonstrating the resilient capacity of E. faecalis to colonise the undamaged endovascular endothelial surface directly and produce robust microcolony biofilms encapsulated in a bacterially derived extracellular matrix. The article also considers the morphological similarities when these biofilms develop on different host sites, for example when E. faecalis colonises the gastrointestinal epithelium as a commensal member of the common vertebrate microbiome, lurking in plain sight and transmitting systemic infection. These phenotypes may enable the organism to survive as an unrecognised infection in asymptomatic subjects, providing an infectious resource for subsequent clinical process of endocarditis.
Keywords
Enterococcus faecalis; vegetation; infective endocarditis; biofim; cardiac endovascular infection; gastrointestinal
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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