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Newborns delivered by C-section acquire human skin microbes just after birth, but the sources remain unknown. We hypothesized that the operating room (OR) environment contains human skin bacteria that could be seeding C-section born infants.

To test this hypothesis, we sampled 11 sites in four operating rooms from three hospitals in two cities. Following a C-section procedure, we swabbed OR floors, walls, ventilation grids, armrests, and lamps. We sequenced the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene of 44 samples using Illumina MiSeq platform. Sequences were analyzed using the QIIME pipeline. Only 68 % of the samples (30/44, >1000 sequences per site) yielded sufficient DNA reads to be analyzed. The bacterial content of OR dust corresponded to human skin bacteria, with dominance of Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium …