Pathogenic microbes contaminating mobile phones in hospital environment in Northeast India: incidence and antibiotic resistance

Abstract

BackgroundThe present study attempts to identify and determine the pattern of drug susceptibility of the microorganisms present in mobile phones of health care workers (HCWs) and non-HCWs in a hospital environment. Mobile phones of 100 participants including both genders were randomly swabbed from nine different wards/units and the bacterial cultures were characterized using VITEK 2 system.ResultsForty-seven mobile phones were culture positive and a total of 57 isolates were obtained which consisted of 28 Gram-positive organisms and 29 Gram-negative organisms. The predominating organisms were Acinetobacter baumannii and Staphylococcus hominis. Among all the isolates from the mobile phones of HCW and non-HCWs, five isolates had ESBL and three isolates had colistin resistance. Incidentally, MRSA was not found on the mobile phones tested. The isolated organisms showed 100% susceptibility to linezolid, daptomycin, vancomycin, imipenem, meropenem, gentamicin, amikacin, ciprofloxacin and tigecycline, while high resistance was shown against benzylpenicillin (75.0%), cefuroxime and cefuroxime axetil (56.5%). Non-HCWs’ mobile phones were more contaminated as compared to HCWs (P = 0.001) and irrespective of individuals’ gender or toilet habits, both Gram-positive and Gram-negative organisms were present on the mobile phones.ConclusionThis study reports for the first time that the mobile phones of non-health care workers harbour more bacterial diversity and are more prone to cause transmission of pathogens. This study can serve to educate the public on personal hand hygiene practices and on maintaining clean mobile phones through antiseptic measures.

Fungal contamination of medical students’ mobile phones from the University of Belgrade, Serbia: a cross-sectional study

“…Based on our results, male students had significantly more often mobile phones contaminated with fungi. Similar findings were reported by a study from India which showed a higher rate of mobile phone contamination in males compared to females 16 . This can be attributed to better hand hygiene awareness and practices among female students compared to males 16 .…”

“…According to our results, lack of mobile phone cleaning was independently associated with fungal contamination of students’ mobile phones. Sailo et al, found that mobile phones which were never cleaned had more microorganisms 16 . In a study from Saudi Arabia, 44.9% of subjects never cleaned their phones 17 , while in an Indian study up to 97% of subjects do not routinely clean their mobile phones 7 .…”

What is the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 from the use of public toilets?

“…There is strong evidence for the role of mobile phones and similar technology as both vectors and reservoirs for infectious agents (Banawas et al, 2018;Bhoonderowa et al, 2014;Sailo et al, 2019;Cheng et al, 2020). Their use in toilet settings should therefore be discouraged.…”

The prevalence of bacterial contamination on mobile phones of pharmacy university students

“…Microbial contamination on MPs was widely investigated in healthcare workers (HCWs) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and non-HCWs, including in community 1,7,12 . Most common microbes include environmental germs, normal skin and mouth flora such as coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), Micrococcus spp., Diphtheroids, Bacillus spp., Staphylococcus aureus, non-hemolytic streptococci, Enterococcus spp.…”

“…and gram-negative bacilli (GNB) groups. Moreover, pathogenic and antimicrobial resistance microorganisms such as methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and extended-spectrum -lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae Pharmaceutical Sciences Asia (ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae) and other antimicrobial drug resistant microbes were isolated 11,[13][14] .…”