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Background: Tablet computers are increasingly being used in hospital patient care and are often colonized with important human pathogens, while the impact of disinfection interventions remains controversial., Method: In a prospective hygiene intervention study we consecutively sampled tablet computers exclusively used in a high-resource general internal medicine tertiary care setting with high routine hygiene measures. Our aim was to examine the change in colonizing bacteria on tablet computers before and after the introduction of a mandatory twice daily tablet disinfection intervention. Microbial identification was performed by conventional culture, and the association of bacterial colonization with the intervention was investigated using logistic regression., Results: In a total of 168 samples we identified colonizing bacteria in 149 (89%) of samples. While the most commonly identified species were normal skin bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus found in 18 (11%) of samples was the most frequent potential pathogen. We did not detect any Enterococci or Enterobacteriaceae. The disinfection intervention was associated with substantially less overall bacterial colonization (odds ratio 0.16; 95%-CI 0.04-0.56), while specific colonization with Staphylococcus aureus was only slightly decreased (odds ratio 0.46; 95%-CI 0.16-1.29)., Conclusion: Our results indicate that a twice daily disinfection can still substantially reduce bacterial colonization of in-hospital tablet computers used in a high-resource and high hygiene setting., Competing Interests: Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Background: Interspecies interactions of the nasopharyngeal microbiota are likely to be involved in the pathogenesis of acute otitis media (AOM). Capturing the breadth of microbial interactions requires a detailed description of the microbiota during health and AOM., Methods: The nasopharyngeal microbiota of 163 infants with (n = 153) or without (n = 10) AOM was characterized using nasopharyngeal swabs and multiplexed pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA. Nasopharyngeal swab specimens were collected during 4 winter seasons from 2004 through 2010 for infants with AOM and during 2010 for controls., Results: Fifty-eight bacterial families were identified, of which Moraxellaceae, Streptococcaceae, and Pasteurellaceae were the most frequent. Commensal families were less prevalent in infants with AOM than in controls. In infants with AOM, prior exposure to antimicrobials and administration of the heptavalent conjugated pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PCV7) were also associated with reduced prevalence of distinct commensal families (Streptococcaceae and Corynebacteriaceae). In addition, antimicrobial exposure increased the prevalence of Enterobacteriaceae and the abundance of Pasteurellaceae. Other factors, such as age, sex, day care, and a history of recurrent AOM, did not influence the microbiota., Conclusions: Infants' nasopharyngeal microbiota undergoes significant changes during AOM and after exposure to antimicrobials and PCV7, which is mainly attributable to reduced prevalence of commensal bacterial families.