Microbial Investigation of Diabetic foot ulcer - An Australian Perspective — ASN Events
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  2. Poster Session B
  3. Microbial Investigation of Diabetic foot ulcer - An Australian Perspective

Microbial Investigation of Diabetic foot ulcer - An Australian Perspective (#330)

Sumeet Sandhu 1 , Irani Rathnayake 1 , Flavia Huygens 1
  1. Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI), Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are one of the most common causes of lower limb amputations, prolonged outpatient care and hospitalization worldwide. Bacterial infection is one of the complications of DFU. As conventional microbiological methods are time consuming and only identifies about 2% of the wound microbiota, detection of bacteria present in DFUs using molecular methods is highly advantageous. The present study was undertaken to determine the bacterial profile of infected ulcers along with the bacterial antibiotic resistance and virulence traits using DNA based techniques. A total of 30 patients with DFUs were included in this study. 223 swab samples were obtained from these patients and DNA was extracted from swabs. The extracted DNA samples were subjected to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) using species-specific primers to detect the three main DFU infecting bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterococcus faecalis. Furthermore, the antibiotic resistance profiles and virulence traits of the targeted species were also investigated.S. aureus was the dominant pathogen in infected DFUs as it was present in 44.8% of samples, followed by P. aeruginosa which was detected in 15% of samples and E. faecalis was not detected in the tested samples. 25% of S. aureus were found to be Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). The Panton-Valentine Leucocidin (PVL) virulence trait was absent in all the tested S.aureus. All of the P. aeruginosa harboured exoS virulence trait and the toxA virulence gene was present in 90.9% of the P. aeruginosa containing samples. None of the patient samples harboured antibiotic resistant P. aeruginosa.This is the first Australian report documenting the presence of S. aureus and P.aeruginosa in DFU wounds using advanced and efficient DNA-based methods. We conclude that these bacteria contribute to the chronicity of the ulcer. Further studies will be needed to address the role of these microorganisms in the DFU trajectory. 

 Keywords: Diabetic Foot Ulcers, Microbiology, Antibiotic resistance, Virulence

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