Dear Editor,
I read with enthusiasm the article by Debnath et al. entitled, “Presence of multidrug resistant bacteria on mobile phones of healthcare workers accelerates the spread of nosocomial infections and regarded as a threat to public health in Bangladesh” published in the Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure.[1] Debnath et al. investigated the prevalence of microbiological contamination of mobile phones of clinicians in Bangladeshi hospitals and identified isolates of different. These authors have concluded that antibiotic resistance is increasing every day and even the mobile phones of medical personnel are spreading multidrug-resistant bacteria which cause dangerous nosocomial infections.
The paper authored by Daoudi et al. addresses a very important issue. However, the authors did not pay attention to new findings that show exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) generated by mobile phones which may enhance bacterial resistance against antibiotics which in turn amplifies the risks associated with contamination of mobile phones. No doubt, this EMF-induced resistance can make the contamination of mobile phones a serious, life-threatening problem. Mobile phones, today, are the main source of human exposure to EMFs.[2,3,4,5,6] Therefore, I and my research group have previously studied the EMF-induced resistance of bacteria after exposure to EMFs generated by different sources. We have also studied the effect of mechanical waves such as diagnostic ultrasound but found that ultrasound could make the antibiotic-resistant bacteria susceptible.[7] In contrast with mechanical waves of ultrasound, we realized that when bacteria preexposed to either ionizing electromagnetic[8] or nonionizing electromagnetic radiation,[9] they become more resistant to antibiotics. Based on these findings, bacterial contamination of mobile phones of medical personnel is an issue which needs to be addressed rapidly.
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Conflicts of interest
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REFERENCES
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