Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The Outcome of Antibiotic Overuse before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Oman

Nenad Pandak
* ORCID logo ,
Hilal Al Sidairi
,
Ibrahim Al-Zakwani
,
Zakariya Al Balushi
,
Shabnam Chhetri
ORCID logo ,
Muna Ba'Omar
ORCID logo ,
Sultan Al Lawati
,
Seif S S Al-Abri
ORCID logo ,
Faryal Khamis
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 22 September 2023 / Approved: 22 September 2023 / Online: 22 September 2023 (11:44:59 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Pandak, N.; Al Sidairi, H.; Al-Zakwani, I.; Al Balushi, Z.; Chhetri, S.; Ba’Omar, M.; Al Lawati, S.; Al-Abri, S.S.; Khamis, F. The Outcome of Antibiotic Overuse before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Oman. Antibiotics 2023, 12, 1665, doi:10.3390/antibiotics12121665. Pandak, N.; Al Sidairi, H.; Al-Zakwani, I.; Al Balushi, Z.; Chhetri, S.; Ba’Omar, M.; Al Lawati, S.; Al-Abri, S.S.; Khamis, F. The Outcome of Antibiotic Overuse before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Tertiary Care Hospital in Oman. Antibiotics 2023, 12, 1665, doi:10.3390/antibiotics12121665.

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a serious global public health challenge, may have accelerated development during the COVID-19 pandemic because antibiotics were prescribed for COVID-19. This study aimed to assess antibiotics use before and during the pandemic and correlate the results with the rate of resistant microorganisms detected in hospitalized patients during the study period. This single centre study looked retrospectively at four years of data (2018–2021) from Royal Hospital, Muscat, Oman. The consumption rate was presented as the antibiotic consumption index, the ratio of defined daily dose (DDD) per 100 bed-days. Analyses were performed using the nonparametric test for trend across the study period. Correlation between antibiotic consumption indexes and the isolated microorganisms in the four-year study period was performed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. We compared data from the pre-COVID-19 to the COVID-19 period. Though more patients were admitted pre-COVID-19 (132,828 versus 119,191 during COVID-19) more antibiotics were consumed during the pandemic; vancomycin and ceftriaxone had higher consumption during than before the pandemic (p-values 0.001 and 0.036, respectively). Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) and Candida. auris were detected more during the COVID-19 period with p-values of 0.026 and 0.004, respectively. Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE), vancomycin resistant Enterococcus spp., and C. auris were detected more often during the pandemic with p-values of 0.011, 0.002, and 0.03, respectively. Significant positive correlations between antibiotic consumption and drug resistant isolates were noted. This study confirms that the overuse of antibiotics triggers the development of bacterial resistance; our results emphasize the importance of antibiotic control.

Keywords

antibiotics; multidrug resistance; meropenem; vancomycin; ceftriaxone; pandemics; COVID-19; Candida auris; Oman; viral infections

Subject

Medicine and Pharmacology, Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Download PDF

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0
Metrics 0
Get PDF Cite Share 0
Bookmark BibSonomy Mendeley Reddit Delicious
×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.