Fist Bumping Spreads Fewer Germs than Handshakes, Study

Fist bumping is more hygienic and spreads fewer germs as compared to the traditional handshake or even a high five, a new study has found.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom.

Handshake is a popular form of greetings worldwide. Hand-to-hand contact creates a sense of trust between people. The study shows that doctors can maintain healthy relationships with the patients and reduce the risk of disease spread by opting for a fist bump instead of the traditional handshake or the cool high-five.

The current study supports an earlier research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that sought a ban on handshakes in the hospital environment.

Researchers offer a practical solution that can help lower healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Each year, about one in 25 patients in hospital suffers from an HAI and about 75,000 hospitalized patients die from an infection acquired at the hospital.

For the study, researchers carried out tests to see which form of hand-to-hand contact spread fewer germs. The team dipped sterile gloves in a container with microbes. Participants were asked to greet a recipient with these germ-laden gloves. Receivers, too, were given sterile gloves.

The receivers' gloves were then dipped in a solution. Researchers counted the number of germs transmitted from greeter to receiver gloves and found that handshakes were the dirtiest of them all. In the study, a handshake spread twice as many microbes as a high-five and a fist bump spread fewer germs than a high five. Researchers also found that longer the duration of the greetings, higher was the number of microbes on the recipient glove.

"Adoption of the fist bump as a greeting could substantially reduce the transmission of infectious diseases between individuals," said David Whitworth, PhD., one of the study authors, according to a news release. "It is unlikely that a no‐contact greeting could supplant the handshake; however, for the sake of improving public health we encourage further adoption of the fist bump as a simple, free, and more hygienic alternative to the handshake."

The study is published in the American Journal of Infection Control.