The increasing use of indwelling foreign bodies has become essential in modern day clinical practice and it entails an enormously positive impact on human health. In consequence, the development of device-related infection, in particular prosthetic join infections, is also increasing and remains one of the major complications that scientists and clinicians face within orthopaedics nowadays. Biofilm formation play a pivotal role in implant-associated infections. Due to the increased tolerability

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... of biofilms to antibiotic therapy, the treatment of biofilm infections is particularly challenging causing worldwide morbidity. While the frequency of infection following orthopaedic surgery is low, once infection occurs, the rates of reinfection are high. To avoid infection relapse, the complete eradication of the biofilm is of paramount importance, which requires high-quality evidence on the choice of antibiotics. However, routine susceptibility tests to determine antibiotic susceptibility do not reflect the ability of the antibiotic to kill bacteria when growing in a biofilm. Many in vitro biofilm models based on staining, molecular or microscopy techniques have been developed during the last decade for the evaluation of antibiofilm strategies, however no standard method have been established yet. Gram-positive bacteria present in the oral cavity, such as streptococci, Abiotrophia and Granulicatella species are mostly responsible for haematogenous device-infections, triggered by dental manipulation and remote infections. While these infections are rarer, their treatment presents a major challenge. The reduced effectiveness of current therapies against these bacterial species spurs research for the identification of optimized therapies with antibiofilm action. The aim of this work was to gain new insights about the most active antibiotics against biofilms from Streptococcus, Abiotrophia and Granulicatella species through the establishment of a reliable and highly sensitive in vitro method based on isothermal microcalorim [...]