Published in
American Society for Microbiology, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 11(48), p. 4248-4250, 2010
DOI: 10.1128/jcm.00896-10
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Dabigatran Inhibits Staphylococcus aureus Coagulase Activity
,
Peter Verhamme
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Abstract
The ability of Staphylococcus aureus to clot plasma through conformational activation of prothrombin by staphylocoagulase is used to distinguish S. aureus from coagulase-negative staphylococci. We show that while the direct thrombin inhibitor dabigatran inhibits staphylocoagulase activity, the clinical use of dabigatran etexilate is not expected to interfere with direct tube coagulase testing. Since the early notion, developed more than a century ago, that the ability to clot plasma correlates with the pathogenic potential of staphylococci (3, 14), this phenomenon has been used to distinguish Staphylococcus aureus from less virulent, coagulase-negative staphylococci. Although the use of new mo-lecular methods for rapid identification of S. aureus from blood culture bottles is expanding (15, 17), detection of coagulase activity by direct tube coagulase (DTC) testing remains a cost-effective, easy to perform, and reliable method for early detec-tion of S. aureus in blood culture broth with a Gram stain result suggestive of staphylococci (10, 13, 16, 23). Since false-negative