Figure 4. Staphylococcus aureus Staphopain A (scpA) and B (sspB) Are Increased in Netherton Syndrome and Induce Epithelial Barrier Damage.

(A and B) (A) Representative picture and (B) TEWL measurement of female C57BL/6J murine back skin after epicutaneous application of 1e⁷ CFU/cm² of S. aureus (SA) wild-type (WT), SA scpA knockout (−ΔscpA), SA sspB knockout (ΔsspB), or SA scpA/sspB double knockout (ΔscpAΔsspB) for 48 h (n = 5 per group). Results represent mean ± SEM, and one-way ANOVA was used to determine statistical significance: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and ****p < 0.0001.

(C) Number of reads from metagenomic data corresponding to S. aureus scpA (red) and sspB (blue) genes normalized per library size for each sample.

(D) Relative abundance of S. aureus scpA (red) and sspB (blue) mRNA isolated from swabs of healthy control and NS non-lesional and lesional skin normalized to skin area (n, number of individual skin swabs per condition). Results represent mean ± SEM, and a non-parametric unpaired Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine statistical significance: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and ****p < 0.0001.

(E) Spearman correlation between the relative abundance of either scpA (red) or sspB (blue) mRNA and S. aureus (SA) CFU/cm² from all skin swabs. Each dot represents an individual swab. Results are represented as mean ± SEM.

In (A) and (B), data are representatives of at least two independent experiments. See also Figure S5.