Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology

The present study conducted to examine bacterial contamination of mobile phones and their antibiotic susceptibility patterns. Surfaces of 300 mobile phones of randomly chosen from students, employees and lecturer at campus of University of Kufa were aseptically swabbed. Serial dilution was utilized as a part of bacterial quantification with blood and MacConkey agars. Gram stain and API20 system were applied in identification and disc diffusion method employed in antibiotic sensitivity testing. There was 86% of the surfaces mobile phone contaminated with a mean bacterial number of 10.11x10⁶CFU/mL with a total of 10 bacterial species isolates. Bacterial isolates include Staphylococcus epidermidis and Bacillus cereus (40%) each one, which were the dominant isolates, followed by Staphylococci aureus (20%), Streptococcus pneumoniae (12%), Escherichia coli (9%), Enterococcus feacalis (9%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (5%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (3%), Salmonella spp. (2%), Shigella spp. (2%). Antimicrobial susceptibility testing demonstrated that isolated bacteria appeared with different resistant patterns. So that mobile phone becomes a potential source of disease transmission requiring utilization of individual cleanliness as preventive methods.