Biofilm Library

About

Persistent wound infections contain microbial aggregates that withstand high doses of antibiotics and enhanced ability to evade host immune defenses. These characteristics are well-recognized hallmarks of biofilms, as defined in the literature.

However, chronic infections present complex medical challenges and extrapolation of their characteristics and pathophysiology from in vitro observations fails to fully explain the bacterial behavior in these infections.

A Letter to the Editor titled Microbial biofilms and chronic wounds: facts and speculation, published in the Journal of Wound Management, explores this further, discussing both the established facts and ongoing speculation regarding microbial biofilms in chronic wounds (access here).

To support clinicians, researchers, and educators, EWMA has developed a comprehensive biofilm resource library. This resource provides access to:

  1. Images and figures available for free download
  2. Key literature within the field of biofilm in chronic wounds

 

We aim for this library to be a dynamic and continually expanding collection of supporting materials, and hope it will stimulate objective debate and evidence-based research within the field of chronic wounds, with the ultimate goal of benefiting patients.

 

Image Library

How to acquire images:

  • Click on the thumbnail or the links located on the right side under “Downloads”.
  • When using the images, please provide the following credit: Costerton Biofilm Center, University of Copenhagen

Image 1: Chronic wound infection#1, CLSM, 63x, S. aureus

Image 2: Chronic wound infection#2, CLSM, 63x, S. aureus

Image 3: Chronic wound infection#3, CLSM, 63x, S. aureus

Image 3: Chronic wound infection#4, CLSM, 63x, P. aeruginosa

Figure 1: Schematic drawing of a chronic wound with different species of bacteria heterogeneously distributed in various sizes of biofilms and as single cells from the top to the deeper layers of the wound.
Four confocal microscopy images from patients with a chronic leg wound. Images show biofilms in different sizes with scattered single cells. Bacteria were stained with a universal 16S PNA-FISH probe (red), and eukaryotic cells were counter-stained with DAPI (blue).

Figure 2: List of current assumptions regarding biofilms in wounds.

Acknowledgement: The figures were created using BioRender.com.

Key literature

Authors & Editors

  • Tim Holm Jakobsen
  • Kendra Rumbaugh
  • Tom Coenye
  • Thomas Bjarnsholt

 

On behalf of the EWMA Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) Group

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