Hospital Microbiomics: Benchmarking from the First Longitudinal Study of Microbiome Dynamics among Patient, Staff and Hospital Habitats

Abstract

A recently published analysis of microbial dynamics within the hospital setting is the first longitudinal study of its kind and provides baseline evidence to better understand how human-borne microbes colonize and distribute through a monitored indoor environment.1 Equipped with subject matter expertise and modern methodologies in medicine, patient healthcare, and microbiome metagenomics research, the authors developed community-level knowledge about microorganisms unintentionally transferred between patient, staff, and building surfaces over the course of one year at a newly commissioned in-patient university hospital.1 Their published results clarify some long-held notions about how people serve as vectors for extensive transmission of commensal microbes amongst themselves across commonly contacted surfaces. This perspective discusses some notable aspects of their findings on the dynamics of microbial communities shared among people and many surface habitats in the patient rooms and nurses’ stations, and proposes that the study may be considered in beginning to design standardized microbiomics methodologies. Such benchmarking and baseline understandings are relevant and applicable to similar analysis in other health-related as well as to other high risk settings requiring awareness and control of infection or microbial contamination.