Study Finds Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients Fared Worse When Treated With Antibiotics

A study of more than half a million patients hospitalized for COVID-19 found that “those treated with antibiotics had an increased risk of adverse outcomes compared to those who weren’t given the drugs.”

The practice of prescribing antibiotic use in COVID patients is typically done “out of concern for co-occurring bacterial pneumonia and due to a scarcity of evidence guiding the practice.”

The study involved the medical records of about 520,000 patients admitted to hospitals with COVID from April 2020 through December 2023. The researchers found that “a total of about 160,500 patients, or around 31% of the study population, were treated with antibiotics on their first day in the hospital. More of the patients who received the antibiotics, around 21%, experienced death or a deterioration in their health than those who didn’t, or about 18% of the whole study population. Though the difference was not considered statistically significant, Pulia said the findings support a change in approach.”

The hypothesis from the research team is that since “antibiotics also kill beneficial bacteria, disrupting the microbiome in the gut-lung axis could harm lung immunity. This, combined with side effects related to antibiotic use, may explain why many treated with antibiotics fared worse.” Patients who needed antibiotics for other reasons, like chronic lung disease or suppressed immune systems, were excluded from the study.