Correspondence

Bacterial opportunists including Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae frequently reside in the nasopharynx of healthy children from where it can migrate to cause severe infections involving lungs middle ear and the brain. It is now clear that biofilms promote bacterial persistence during many of these infections. This MiniReview nicely summarizes a large amount of work on Haemophilus and pneumococcus in biofilms alone and in co-culture. Keywords multispecies biofilms; nontypeable Haemo-philus influenzae; otitis media; Streptococcus pneumoniae; inter-species interactions; bacterial pathogenesis