Antibiotic use during the first 6 months of COVID-19 pandemic in Iran: A large-scale multi-centre study.
J Clin Pharm Ther
; 47(12): 2140-2151, 2022 Dec.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36054303
ABSTRACT
WHAT IS KNOWN AND OBJECTIVE:
Although antibiotics are ineffective against viral infections, epidemiological studies have revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the overuse of antibiotics and disruption of antimicrobial stewardship programmes. We investigated the pattern of antibiotic use during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran.METHODS:
A multi-centre retrospective study was designed to investigate the use of 16 broad-spectrum antibiotics in 12 medical centres. The rate of antibiotic use was calculated and reported based on the Defined Daily Dose (DDD) per 100 hospital bed-days. The bacterial co-infection rate was also reported. RESULTS ANDDISCUSSION:
Totally, 43,791 hospitalized COVID-19 patients were recruited in this study. It was found that 121.6 DDD of antibiotics were used per 100 hospital bed-days, which estimated that each patient received approximately 1.21 DDDs of antibiotics every day. However, the bacterial co-infections were detected only in 14.4% of the cases. A direct correlation was observed between the rate of antibiotic use and mortality (r[142] = 0.237, p = 0.004). The rate of antibiotic consumption was not significantly different between the ICU and non-ICU settings (p = 0.15). WHAT IS NEW ANDCONCLUSION:
In this study, widespread antibiotic use was detected in the absence of the confirmed bacterial coinfection in COVID-19 patients. This over-consumption of broad-spectrum antibiotics may be associated with increased mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, which can be an alarming finding.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Infecções Bacterianas
/
COVID-19
Tipo de estudo:
Observational_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Humans
País como assunto:
Asia
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article