Bacterial co-infections and antimicrobial resistance associated with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 infection

ABSTRACT

Bacterial co-infections are typically associated with viral respiratory tract infections and pose a significant public health problem around the world. COVID-19 infection damages tissues lining the respiratory track and regulates immune cells/cytokines leading to microbiome dysbiosis and facilitating the area to be colonized by pathogenic bacterial agents. There have been reports of different types of bacterial co-infection in COVID-19 patients. Some of these reports showed despite geographical differences and differences in hospital settings, bacterial co-infections are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in COVID-19 patients. The inappropriate use of antibiotics for bacterial infections, particularly broad-spectrum antibiotics, can also further complicate the infection process, often leading to multi drug resistance, clinical deterioration, poor prognosis, and eventually death. To this end, researchers must establish a new therapeutic approach to control SARS-CoV-2 and the associated microbial coinfections. Hence, the aim of this review is to highlight the bacterial co-infection that has been recorded in COVID-19 patients and the status of antimicrobial resistance associated with the dual infections.

KEYWORDS:

• Bacteria
• co-infection
• COVID-19
• patients
• SARS-CoV-2

Acknowledgement

The work was supported by the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sport of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Academy Sciences [IFPDP-100-22].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Consent for publication

All authors have provided consent for the manuscript to be published.

Credit authorship contribution statement

Addisu D. Teklemariam, Anwar M. Hashem, Saber H. Saber, Mohammed S. Almuhayawi, Shafiul Haque, Turki S. Abujamel, Steve Harakeh: Writing and revision the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Additional information

Funding

This research work was funded by the Institutional Fund projects under grant no. (IFPDP-100-22). Therefore, the authors gratefully acknowledge technical and financial support from the Ministry of Education and King Abdulaziz University, Deanship of Scientific Research, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.