ArticleFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology2026
Hand-mobile phone culture-burden associations and taxon-level concordance among healthcare-associated personnel: a paired cross-sectional study.
Article in Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Hands and mobile phones are frequently handled during healthcare delivery and caregiving, but their participant-level culture-burden association and taxonomic overlap remain incompletely characterized. We examined whether paired hand and mobile-phone contamination was associated within individuals and whether the two sites showed overlap or discordant detection among culture-defined taxa. Methods: We conducted a paired cross-sectional study in a tertiary Grade A general hospital between April and June 2026. Physicians, nurses, and professional caregivers each provided one hand sample and one paired mobile-phone sample. Because hand and mobile-phone burdens were expressed in different site-specific units, absolute burdens were not directly compared. Spearman rank correlation was the primary association analysis; separately standardized log-burden regression models were used for covariate adjustment. Binary culture-defined taxon profiles were evaluated using overlap metrics, exploratory paired-label multivariate analyses, and exact McNemar tests. Results: A total of 126 participants were included. The median culture burden was 11.67 CFU/cm² (IQR, 1.67-54.17) for hands and 950.00 CFU/phone (IQR, 300.00-2575.00) for mobile phones. The site-specific burdens were positively associated (Spearman rho=0.514, P<0.001). After separate standardization of log10(CFU + 1) values within each site, the association remained in the core adjusted model (standardized beta=0.512, 95% CI 0.291-0.732; P<0.001) and the extended sensitivity model (standardized beta=0.497, 95% CI 0.276-0.718; P<0.001). Median Jaccard similarity was 0.50 among 119 pairs with at least one detected non-Other taxon, and the median shared-taxon count was 1 across all 126 pairs. Exploratory multivariate findings were sensitive to the analysis set and were not reproduced when restricted to pairs with non-Other taxa detected at both sites. Coagulase-negative staphylococci were the only prespecified taxon with significant discordant detection after multiplicity correction. Conclusions: Paired hand and mobile-phone culture burdens showed a positive participant-level association and partial culture-defined taxonomic overlap. The cross-sectional culture-based design does not establish direct microbial transmission or causality. Prospective studies should evaluate whether coordinated hand-hygiene and device-cleaning approaches improve microbiological outcomes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.