ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Mohannad A. AlOmani, Razique Anwer , Abdulelah M. Sandoqa, Fahad G. Alshareef, Abdulaziz Almuzayrie, Omar Alluhadan, Abdullah A. AlShammari, Muath A. Alghamdi, Firas K. Almarriand Khalid Bin Abdulrahman
College of Medicine, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2020;14(3):1761-1768 | Article Number: 6569
https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.14.3.14 | © The Author(s). 2020
Received: 05/08/2020 | Accepted: 12/09/2020 | Published: 24/09/2020
Abstract

Mobile phones (MPs) have become a tool for the transmission of microorganisms due to lack of personal hygiene and maybe the sharing of the mobile phone by more than one person that which leads it to be a suitable carrier for microbes. This study aimed to draw a bead on the practices of hygiene of MPs among people living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by performing a cross-sectional survey of 204 participants. The response rate of this study was above ~95%. Results showed that 19.6 % of responders clean their MPs once in a day, but the majority (33.8%) never cleaned their MPs. More than a quarter of the respondents (28.4%) use tissue paper to clean MPs. Among the users, ~60% use MPs while eating, 76% realized that their MPs might be resource of transmitting microorganisms. The study was also carried out using standard techniques to identify and count the bacterial contamination using the MPs. A combined number of 75 MPs of the participants in the shopping malls of Riyadh were screened for microorganism identification. From 75 public MPs, 109 bacteria were isolated. Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the predominant organisms isolate (76.1%) and with 1.8% by Staphylococcus aureus. Micrococcus sps. was also found (12.8%). A small number of Kocuria sps. were also isolated (4.6%). These results showed that common peoples’ mobile phones were contaminated with various types of microorganisms. The results provide an evidence base for the development and enhancement of hygienic MPs using practices.

Keywords

Mobile phones, bacterial contamination, infectious agent, hygiene practices, coagulase-negative staphylococci

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© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.