Posted on 10/15/2006 6:16:52 PM PDT by blam
Hotel-room surfaces can harbor viruses
Nathan Seppa
From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
Rhinovirus, which is responsible for roughly half of all common colds, survives on surfaces in hotel rooms for hours and can be transferred from there to people, a study shows.
J. Owen Hendley, a pediatrician at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, and his colleagues obtained mucus samples from 15 people who had active rhinovirus infections. The scientists then invited each participant to spend a night in a hotel room. Each person was instructed to remain awake in the room for at least 5 hours in the evening and to spend at least 2 hours there the next day.
Afterward, the researchers tested several surfaces in the rooms, such as television remote controls, doorknobs, telephones, and light switches. In all, 52 of 150 tested surfaces had detectable rhinovirus traceable to the study participant who had stayed there.
To re-create the rest of the suspected infection pathway, the researchers brought five of the volunteers back to the hotel several weeks later. Before each volunteer arrived, the researchers placed drops of that person's stored, rhinovirus-laden mucus on light switches, telephone handsets, and the phones' keypads in two hotel rooms. In one room, the mucus samples were placed the night before; in the other room, a half hour before each volunteer's arrival.
The researchers asked each volunteer, with clean hands, to touch each of the "infected" objects. After each touch, a scientist tested the participant's finger for the virus. The tests showed that the virus was again present on the fingers of these people—who were now immune to reinfection—in 10 of 30 instances in which they touched surfaces infected the night before and in 18 of 30 of the instances of freshly infected surfaces.
The findings underscore the need for hand washing, particularly around the home, where most disease is spread, Hendley says. People presumably infect themselves by touching a contaminated surface and then putting a finger to an eye or nose, he says.
The findings raise questions about commercial areas besides hotel rooms, he says. The virus remains more accessible on smooth surfaces than it does on cloth or other textured surfaces, so "I wonder about menus" in restaurants, Hendley says.
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Nathan Seppa
From San Francisco, at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy
More than one-fourth of skin or muscle infections that require hospitalization originate from microbes acquired in a clinic, hospital, or other medical-care setting, researchers find.
Using data from 134 hospitals in the northeastern United States, scientists identified 7,329 cases of infection caused by no more than one microbe. The infections typically followed trauma, surgery, or an invasive medical procedure such as kidney dialysis. The researchers excluded infections of the lungs and urinary tract. Staphylococcus aureus accounted for 55 percent of all infections.
The scientists found that 27 percent of the infections arose from microbial strains acquired in hospitals. People with such infections were three times as likely to die in the hospital as were patients whose infections originated outside the medical setting, says physician Benjamin A. Lipsky of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.
People with infections acquired in medical settings "have a different prognosis" because the microbe involved is more likely to be resistant to some drugs, so doctors should treat those infections with targeted drugs rather than broad-spectrum antibiotics, Lipsky says.
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I wonder how many suitcases of grant money these jokers consumed on this ground-breaking study.
LOL -- I bet some of the people in this article have gotten government grants to study the obvious.
Now we know why people wore gloves in public in more civilized times...
You beat me to it.
Next they will tell us not to drink toilet water.
Try using these, if necessary, in hotel rooms.
I shudder to think what viruses could be left around in motel rooms--in San Francisco.
I actually was in San Francisco in June, and I took Lysol Wipes with me and used them in the hotel room when I thought it was necessary. LOL
Buy CVS store brand spray...open the window,or turn on the air and soak the room...beds, air conditioning, everything, then go and eat, see a movie for a couple of hours.
What kind of CVS spray?
Me too~ When we stay in a hotel, I take Clorox wipes and wipe down everything in the room......spray Lysol on the chairs, bed, pillows. I don't know who was there before me and I don't know if housekeeping gives a darn as to how clean the room is.
Their own brand of disinfectant.
...but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express™ last night.
No joke - I travel with them.
And don't forget those happy fungal infections you can pick up on your bare feet.
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