BACTERIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FINGERS OF STUDENTS IN MADONNA UNIVERSITY ELELE CAMPUS.

Microorganism can be transferred to the human finger nail from contaminated surfaces. Contaminated hands can transmit disease to one self as well as to others. This study was done to isolate bacteria present in the finger nails of students of Madonna University Elele Campus, Rivers State Nigeria. A total of 100 finger nails were swabbed, samples were taken from randomly selected student females (70%) and males (30%). Out of these 100 samples of finger nail swabs, 44 isolates were gotten. From the result, the most frequently isolated organism was Staphylococcus aureus 21(47.7%) and the least isolated organism was Pseudomonas aeruginosa 1(2.3%), other organism isolated were Klebsiellaspp 3(6.8%), Escherichia coli 14(31.8%), Salmonella 5(11.4). There was no significant difference p>0.05 among percentage occurrence among the organism isolated. Also this work shows that the highest number of isolates gotten from the females was 32(72,7%) and 12(27.3%) number of isolates from male students. The result show there was no significant p>0.05 difference among percentage occurrence of organism isolated when compared by gender between the types of organisms isolated and sex distribution of the organisms isolated. This research shows that antibiotics like Levofloxacin, Ciprofloxacin, Perfloxacin, Augmentin are promising therapeutic agents for the treatment of these finger nail bacterial infection among students in Madonna University Elele campus. The subjects needed to be meticulously educated on need for proper hand hygiene and hand washing practice.