Am J Reprod Immunol 2011, 66:534–543.PubMedCrossRef Apoptosis inhibitor 59. Darville T, Hiltke TJ: Pathogenesis of genital tract disease due to Chlamydia trachomatis. J Infect Dis 2010, 201(2):S114–S125.PubMedCentralPubMedCrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contribution BD performed the experiments, acquired, analyzed and interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. FN and ADW: made substantial contributions to the conception and design of experiments,

interpretation of results, and drafted and critically revised the manuscript. JT and HH made substantial contributions to the conception and design of experiments. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background

Approximately 20% of healthy adults are persistent nasal carriers of S. aureus and 60% harbour it intermittently. Such carriers have been shown to participate in the epidemiology and pathogenesis of S. aureus infections and are a potential source of outbreaks especially in hospital settings [1,2]. Nasal carriers are at an increased risk of acquiring surgical site infections, foreign body infections and bacteremias [3,4]. Although nasal colonisation with MRSA is low but such carriers are a major threat factor for themselves (through auto-infection/endogenous source) as well as can disseminate these highly resistant strains that pose serious difficulty in compound screening assay treatment thereafter. The current treatment strategies for nasal decolonisation rely on the use of topical antibiotics such as bacitracin, fusidic acid, ciprofloxacin, 4EGI-1 cost rifampicin [5]. However, emergence of resistant strains has led to treatment failures. Mupirocin is another potent anti-MRSA agent which has been found to be effective in decolonising the nares. Long term studies

have however, shown that there is an initial clearance of bacteria from nares following mupirocin treatment but re-colonization takes place after 3 months [6,7]. The rapid emergence of resistance to mupirocin therefore calls for search for alternative options. Phage therapy has been shown to be a potential alternative treatment for treating various S. aureus infections [8-13]. Hence, an alternative Selleck Gemcitabine or supplement to antibiotic therapy, is the use of bacterial viruses (phage/bacteriophage) to target MRSA colonisation in the anterior nares of the affected population. However, there is comparatively limited work published on the use of phages as nasal decolonising agents as compared to their proven therapeutic potential in other infections. Moreover, the combined application of phage and antibiotic in eliminating the nasal load of S. aureus has not been looked into earlier studies. Combination therapy (use of two different agents) represents an attractive option for nasal decolonisation due to its ability to check emergence of resistant mutants [13,14].