{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T06:31:26Z","timestamp":1787725886907,"version":"build-2784847793"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787702400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol."],"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Results<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>A total of 126 participants were included. The median culture burden was 11.67 CFU\/cm\u00b2 (IQR, 1.67\u201354.17) for hands and 950.00 CFU\/phone (IQR, 300.00\u20132575.00) for mobile phones. The site-specific burdens were positively associated (Spearman rho=0.514, P&amp;lt;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\u20130.732; P&amp;lt;0.001) and the extended sensitivity model (standardized beta=0.497, 95% CI 0.276\u20130.718; P&amp;lt;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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>\n                  <jats:sec>\n                    <jats:title>Conclusions<\/jats:title>\n                    <jats:p>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.<\/jats:p>\n                  <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fcimb.2026.1929858","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]],"date-time":"2026-08-26T06:04:11Z","timestamp":1787724251000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Hand\u2013mobile phone culture-burden associations and taxon-level concordance among healthcare-associated personnel: a paired cross-sectional study"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Wenjing","family":"Jiang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Hospital Infection Management, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]},{"name":"West China School of Public Health, Sichuan University","place":["Chengdu, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chunli","family":"Song","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Hospital Infection Management, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Li","family":"Cao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Hospital Infection Management, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuhan","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Hospital Infection Management, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiaoyu","family":"Liao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Hospital Infection Management, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yu","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xianyu","family":"You","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Suchuan","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Juan","family":"Tang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Infectious Diseases, Zigong First People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Zigong, China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"628","DOI":"10.3855\/jidc.556","article-title":"The potential role of mobile phones in the spread of bacterial infections","volume":"3","author":"Akinyemi","year":"2009","journal-title":"J. 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