Title: Who Are You—Staphylococcus saprophyticus? | Clinical Infectious Diseases | Oxford Academic
Headings: Who Are You—
Staphylococcus saprophyticus?

Who Are You— Staphylococcus saprophyticus?
Published:
Abstract
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References

Content: the organism has been isolated in young boys [ 13 ], male homosexuals, and elderly men with indwelling urinary catheters [ 14 ]. It also can cause urethritis, epididimitis, prostatitis, and nephrolithiasis in men, and is relatively rare in hospitalized men [ 15 ]. In contrast, S. saprophyticus appears to be unusual in Israel. In a study performed 20 years ago [ 16 ], we did not find any cases of S. saprophyticus infection among 198 young women with acute UTI. In addition, only 103 (0.3%) of 35,580 and 88 (0.6%) of 15,206 urine cultures performed at 2 microbiological laboratories in Northern Israel that were positive for a pathogen yielded S. saprophyticus (unpublished data). There is one puzzling report of the recovery of coagulase-negative staphylococci in 15.6% of young Israeli women with UTI who have been recently sexually active [ 17 ]. Unfortunately, the bacterial isolates were not further identified. These significant differences in incidence could be attributed to different techniques of sampling, delivery, culture, and interpretation of cultures used by different authors. Although S. saprophyticus mainly infects young women, other coagulase-negative staphylococci are usually isolated from hospitalized elderly patients with urinary indwelling catheters or other manipulations of the urinary tract. The main reason for this difference is the capacity of S. saprophyticus to adhere to the uroepithelial cells, and other coagulase-negative staphylococci have the ability to colonize indwelling catheters.