Toothbrushes harbor hundreds of mysterious viruses: Scientists sound alarm

BGR

If you don’t have enough nightmare fuel in your life, like scientists creating living skin for robots, they are here to give you even more to hyper-fixate over. And the latest batch of gasoline being poured on your nighttime terrors comes at the expense of your toothbrush, as new research shows toothbrushes hold hundreds of viruses that we’ve never seen before.

I mean, it’s pretty well known already that our toothbrushes and showerheads are chock full of different bacteria. However, we don’t know much about the viruses that dwell on those surfaces. As such, researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois decided to swab 92 showerheads and 36 different toothbrushes to get an idea of what kind of viruses might call these daily items home.

The toothbrushes and showerheads were taken from the bathrooms of various people living in the United States, and when sequences for DNA, the researchers uncovered a total of more than 600 different viruses calling the toothbrushes and showerheads home. These viruses are what we typically refer to as bacteriophages—which means they infect bacteria.

Most of the viruses were found to come from the various toothbrushes that were sampled for the research. And, many of them are viruses that aren’t harmful to humans, and hadn’t ever been described by scientists before. The researchers noted just how crazy this was and how much “novel stuff” is still waiting to be discovered in the world.

While it is surprising that they found so many unknown viruses on toothbrushes specifically, it isn’t surprising that so many of these viruses have yet to be described. The world is absolutely full of various things that we haven’t ever seen, including viruses we’ve never seen. And many of these will likely go on to become the target of more in-depth studies—like the viruses that can hijack the bacteria’s basic functions and then make copies of itself.

Further, it’s likely these viruses are present in other areas beyond just toothbrushes. The researchers advised that they are likely present on any moist surface found within your home, including your fridge, the sink, and so on down the list. Again, this isn’t exactly surprising, but the results are quite fascinating to say the least.

The researchers’ full findings can be found in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.

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