Microbiome Analysis of Hospital Wheelchairs

Public-use wheelchairs are high-contact surfaces that may serve as potential vectors of microbial contamination in healthcare settings. This study aimed to provide an assessment of microbiological contamination on hospital wheelchairs. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing was performed using both Illumina short-read and Oxford Nanopore long-read platforms on samples collected from both fabric and leather wheelchair surfaces to characterize microbial communities and compare contamination profiles between different materials.