Microbial contamination of cell phones of nursing department students in Technical Institute of Baqubah, Iraq

Abstract

This study was aimed to investigate microbiological colonization of cell phones used by nursing students of Baqubah Technical Institute, from June to August 2018. In 150 randomly collected cell phones, 133 bacterial and 74 fungal species were isolated using sterile swabs from cell phones surface. The microbe were identified using conventional methods, bacterial species isolated were: Staphylococcus aureus (48%), Staphylococcus epidermidis (25.2), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (14.1), Bacillus subtilis (7%), Escherichia coli (2.3), Streptococcus viridians (2%) and Proteus spp. (1.2%) whereas, the fungal species isolated were Cladosporium spp. (36.1%), Alternaria spp. (17%), Penicillium (9%), Aspergillus fumigates (6.3%), and Aspergillus niger (32%). The bacterial isolates were tested by antibiotic disks diffusion method. High percentage of bacterial isolates was found resistance to erythromycin, cefoxitin, ciprofloxacin and clindamycin. Several S. aureus and S. epidermides isolates were resistant to erythromycin and cefoxitin. The Proteus spp. and E. coli were found highly sensitive to ampicilin, amikacin, cefepime, cefroxain and imipenem. However, the P. aeruginoae spp. showed two different antibiotics sensitivity profiles for the similar antibiotics. This study confirmed that the students cell phones were contaminated with several pathogenic bacterial and fungal species thus might act as an important source of cross-transmission of human and antibiotics resistant.