Different sensitivity levels to norspermidine on biofilm formation in clinical and commensal Staphylococcus epidermidis strains

• The biofilm formation is the main virulence factor for Staphylococcus epidermidis.
• The norspermidine (Nors) inhibits and disassembles the biofilm of Bacillus subtilis.
• The Nors on S. epidermidis biofilm formation of clinical strains was tested.
• The Nors inhibited and disassembled the biofilms of S. epidermidis clinical strains.
• Different sensitivity levels to Nors on biofilm formation were observed.

Biofilm formation on medical and surgical devices is the main virulence factor of Staphylococcus epidermidis. A recent study has shown that norspermidine inhibits and disassembles the biofilm in the wild-type Bacillus subtilis NCBI3610 strain. In this study, the effect of norspermidine on S. epidermidis biofilm formation of clinical or commensal strains was tested. Biofilm producing strains of S. epidermidis were isolated from healthy skin (HS; n = 3), healthy conjunctiva (HC; n = 9) and ocular infection (OI; n = 19). All strains were treated with different concentrations of norspermidine, spermidine, putrescine, and cadaverine (1, 10, 25, 50 and 100 μM), and the biofilm formation was tested on microtiter plate. Besides, cell-free supernatants of S. epidermidis growth at 4 h and 40 h were analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to detect norspermidine. Results showed that norspermidine at 25 μM and 100 μM prevented the biofilm formation in 45.16% (14/31) and 16.13% (5/31), respectively; only in one isolate from OI, norspermidine did not have effect. Other polyamines as spermidine, putrescine and cadaverine did not have effect on the biofilm formation of the strains tested. Norspermidine was also capable to disassemble a biofilm already formed. Norspermidine was detected in the 40 h cell-free supernatant of S. epidermidis by GC–MS. Norspermidine inhibited the biofilm development of S. epidermidis on the surface of contact lens. In this work, it was demonstrated that S. epidermidis produces and releases norspermidine causing an inhibitory effect on biofilm formation. Moreover, this is the first time showing that clinical S. epidermidis strains have different sensitivity to norspermidine, which suggest that the composition and structure of the biofilms is varied. We propose that norspermidine could potentially be used in the pre-treating of medical and surgical devices to inhibit the biofilm formation.