Today's smartphone touch screens may one day become the newest lab test environment, given all the advances in wearable monitoring devices.
Ooh, and they also come with all the bacteria needed, apparently.
A new study, published in the journal PeerJ, reveals smartphones are huge bacteria collectors and that fact may one day be a main reason why the handset could morph into a health sensor device with ease.
A new study involving17 smartphone users' devices showed that 82 percent of common bacteria was found both on the users' fingers and on the touch screen.
The link was stronger among women and their smartphones, say the authors.
"The sample size was small, but the findings, while intuitive, were revealing," lead author James Meadow, a postdoctoral researcher in the Biology and the Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon, said in a journal news release.
According to one estimate, there will be 1.75 billion smartphone users worldwide this year. EMarketer predicts 4.55 billion people will use some fashion of mobile phone this year.
"This project was a proof-of-concept to see if our favorite and most closely held possessions microbially resemble us. We are ultimately interested in the possibility of using personal effects as a noninvasive way to monitor our health and our contact with the surrounding environment," he said.
The bad news, however, is the fact that the bacteria is likely finding its way into places it's not wanted and poses a health risk, such as in hospitals and nursing homes.
The good news is that smartphone bacteria analysis could lead to easy detection of biological threats or what the study authors describe as "biological threats or unusual sources of environmental microbes that don't necessarily end up integrated into our human microbiome."
One research report regarding bacteria on mobile devices, including laptops, recently noted that smartphones and tablets house more germs than a toilet seat. That study was conducted by British watchdog Which? and involved swabbing 90 devices. Results found "hazardous" levels of bacteria including E. coli.
