FIG 3.

Biofilm formation and nuclease activity for all isolates and for all patients. This figure shows the amount of biofilm formation (A) and nuclease activity (B) for all S. aureus isolates from all patients at all visits. (A) We arbitrarily determined the categories low and high biofilm formation if the isolates formed less or more than 10% of the biofilm of the positive control (RP62A, a coagulase-negative Staphylococcus that produces large amounts of biofilm compared to S. aureus). In patients 2 to 6, no high biofilm-forming isolates have been observed, while an increasing biofilm formation of isolates was visible for patients 1, 12, 13, and 14. In patients 8 and 11, a decrease of biofilm formation was determined, while from patients 7, 9, and 10, a large percentage of high biofilm-forming isolates over all visits were detected. (B) For the nuclease activity, we distinguished groups with low and high nuclease activity if less or more than 100% of the nuclease activity of the positive control (AH1263) were measured. Half of the patients (patients 6 to 10, 12, and 13) carried more than 92% of isolates with high nuclease activity, while in the other patients, only small numbers of isolates with high nuclease activity were detected. In patient 5 only, no isolates with high nuclease activity were recovered.