A comparative study of Bacterial culture isolates, site of infections and drug resistance pattern between COVID and non COVID patients admitted in a tertiary care hospital: A Pilot study

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Abstract

Introduction

SARS-CoV2 which is a corona virus also predisposes patient to secondary bacterial infection by various mechanisms like-damaging the respiratory epithelium, profoundly affecting the innate and adaptive immunity, antagonising Interferon responses that enhance bacterial adherence, colonisation and invasion to respiratory tissue. In addition, prolonged hospital stay, invasive therapeutic devices, widespread use of empiric antibiotics and most importantly use of immune-suppressants like Steroid or Tocilizumab further increases the chances of bacterial infection. As opposed to this concept-physical distancing, frequent hand washing and use of gloves and protective gear by the healthcare workers also diminishes the chance of secondary bacterial infection. The present study is done to delineate the bacteriological profile, infection site predisposition or to gain knowledge on antibiotic sensitivity pattern.

Method

Retrospective data will be analyzed from June 2020, when the first COVID wave came to June 2021, corresponding to second COVID wave. The present study is a pilot study before collecting and analyzing the whole data Only those samples which were positive for bacterial isolates were randomly selected and the COVID status and drug resistance patterns were checked.

Results and discussion

The most common organism found was Klebsiella. Acinetobacter was also found in few patients. But most striking finding was that COVID positive patients showed higher incidence of antibiotic resistance with Acinetobacter. Though E Coli was also found commonly in COVID positive patients, they were not drug resistant.

Conclusion

MDR infections are common in COVID patients. Acinetobacter and Klebsiella are prone to develope MDR infections. While E.Coli is also common in COVID patients, chance of drug resistance is less among them.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.12.21263386: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    RandomizationIn the present study 30 random samples were taken from the whole period.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.