Abstract
Self-touch may promote the transfer of microorganisms between body parts or surfaces to mucosa. In overt videography of a post-graduate office, students spent 9% of their time touching their own hair, face, neck, and shoulders (HFNS). These data were collected from 274,000 s of surveillance video in a Chinese graduate student office. The non-dominant hand contributed to 66.1% of HFNS-touches. Most importantly, mucous membranes were touched, on average, 34.3 (SE = 2.4) times per hour, which the non-dominant hand contributed to 240% more than the dominant hand. Gender had no significant effect on touch frequency, but a significant effect on duration per touch. The duration per touch on the HFNS was fitted with a log–log linear distribution. Touch behaviour analysis included surface combinations and a probability matrix for sequential touches of 20 sub-surfaces. These findings may partly explain the observed variation in the literature regarding the microbiome community distribution on human skin, supporting the importance of indirect contact transmission route in some respiratory disease transmission and providing data for risk analysis of infection spread and control.
Highlights
Self-touch may promote the transfer of microorganisms between body parts or surfaces to mucosa
It is known that some respiratory and enteric viruses, such as rhinovirus and norovirus may be transmitted by touching mucous membranes with our own contaminated hands[1,2,3], and a vast number of bacteria thrive on human skin[4,5]
We found that the students in a Chinese graduate student office touched themselves an average of 98.7 times per hour and that more than 50% of these touches were on their own H FNS14
Summary
Self-touch may promote the transfer of microorganisms between body parts or surfaces to mucosa. In overt videography of a post-graduate office, students spent 9% of their time touching their own hair, face, neck, and shoulders (HFNS). A recent study showed that students touched surfaces with both hands for more than 90% of the observed time in their office, and more than 10% of touch time was on their own hair, face, neck and shoulders (HFNS)[14]. These body surfaces can be contaminated by our own contaminated hands. All participated students signed an informed consent form before the experiment and all of Health, The University of Hong Kong, 7 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China. *email: Scientific Reports | (2020) 10:10457
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