Antibiotic Susceptibility of Bacteria Isolated from Mobile Phones among Pre-Clinical Medical Students of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, South-South, Nigeria

Background: Cellular phones are used without limits, irrespective of their unknown infectious load, and thus cellular phones can serve as a container of infection among undergraduates.
Objective: This study investigated the microbial profile and antibiotic susceptibility patterns of bacteria isolated from mobile phones belonging to pre-clinical medical students at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State.
Design: Two hundred mobile phone surfaces (130 from females, 70 from males) were sampled using swabs moistened with sterile peptone water inoculated unto MacConkey and nutrient agar. Positive isolates were then identified by the API Identification System (Biomèrieux): API STAPH for Staphylococcusspp, API 20 NE for non-Enterobacteriaceae Gram negative and API 20 E for Enterobacteriaceae. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed on each of the isolates by using disc diffusion method on Muller-Hinton agar
Results: All sampled devices (100%) showed bacterial contamination, with S. aureus being the most prevalent isolate (40.0%), followed by E.coli (26.0%), Klebsiellaspp, (16.0%), P.aeruginosa(10.5%) and Proteus mirabilis(7.5%). Female student phones has more microorganisms( 65.0%) compared to males (35.0%) which was statistically not significant at P˃0.05. Age group 20-25 years had more bacterial carriage, both males (42.9%) and females (37.7%), next was 26-30years in males (28.6%), females (26.6%) followed by 31-35yrs in males (18.6%), females (23.9%) while the least was reported in ˃35years in both males (10.0%) and females (11.5%).
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing revealed ciprofloxacin and cefepime(100%) as the most effective antibiotics closely followed by Erythromycin (97.3%) while chloramphenicol (0%) and vancomycin (4.9%) showed the lowest efficacy.
Conclusion: Mobile phones serve as significant reservoirs for pathogenic bacteria within medical undergraduate communities, therefore personal hand hygiene and phone decontamination ethanol or alcohol-based sanitizers should be adopted.

Antibiotics, Susceptibility, Bacteria, Mobile Phones

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