United States: According to the scientists at Northwestern University in the US, a shocking study has revealed an “absolutely wild” number of viruses aboding on the heads of our showers and the bristles of the brushes we put in our mouths.
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Moreover, recent findings have revealed that some of the microorganisms are entirely unique and novel to science.
The researchers added that Microbes such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses tend to live in a variety of human-built environments. Furthermore, at this point, the apparent clean surfaces will inevitably become a host of those in no time.
That is why dentists and doctors recommend that you change your toothbrush frequently and clean your washroom so that the colony of microbes does not multiply, sciencealert.com reported.
However, some, which are minimal, cannot be avoided at all costs, and thus, it is mandatory to know what particular microbes are most frequently encountered.
What has the new study found?
However, it was not until the researchers in the US had identified the type of bacteria on the shower heads and toothbrushes that another team, including some of the authors of the previous study, investigated the viruses.
It was while Hartmann was at the University of Colorado, Boulder, that she and her colleagues first came up with the concept of investigating microbes on toothbrushes.
“We wanted to know what microbes are living in our homes. If you think about indoor environments, surfaces like tables and walls are really difficult for microbes to live on. Microbes prefer environments with water. And where is there water? Inside our shower heads and on our toothbrushes,” the team added.
They’d been given discussions about how flushing the toilet was circulating around unhealthy germs in our bathroom.
In particular, the team discovered that viral communities – or viromes – residing on both toothbrushes and shower heads happened to bear no resemblance to one another.
Another variation of the virus was also found in the dental toothbrush as compared to the shower one. Since some viruses like to eat specific bacteria, it cannot be surprising if the viromes of these two bathroom settings are significantly different, sciencealert.com reported.
As for toothbrush-designated bacteria, they are also derived from the human mouth; shower heads, on the other hand, harbor water-born bacteria, some of which are known to be pathogens in city water.
As per the author, “Whether interactions between phages and their host have noteworthy implications on human health risks such as antimicrobial resistance dissemination in the built environments requires further investigation,” he concluded.