Seoul National University Bundang Hospital Researcher Reports Recent Findings in COVID-19 (1781. Antibiotic Prescription Trends of Patients with COVID-19: Analysis of National Health Insurance Data in Republic of Korea): Coronavirus – COVID-19

NewsRx COVID-19 Daily

2023 JAN 02 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx COVID-19 Daily -- Researchers detail new data in COVID-19. According to news reporting from Kyonggi Do, South Korea, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Although COVID-19 is a viral infection, it is known that antibiotics are often prescribed due to concerns about combined bacterial infection. Therefore, we aimed to analyze how many patients with COVID-19 received the antibiotic prescription as well as what kinds of factors contributed to it using the National Health Insurance database.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Seoul National University Bundang Hospital: “We retrospectively reviewed claims data for adults 19 years of age and older hospitalized for COVID-19 from December 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020. According to severity classification of the National Institutes of Health guidelines, we calculated not only the proportion of patients receiving antibiotics but also days of treatment per 1000 patient days. In addition, we investigated the factors contributing to antibiotic use by linear regression analysis. Of the 55,228 patients, 47% were male, 55% were older than 50 years of age, and most patients (89%) had no underlying diseases. The majority (84%, 46,576) were classified as having mild to moderate illness, with 11% (6,168) and 5% (2,484) having severe and critical, respectively. Antibiotics were prescribed in a total of 27% (15,081). While 74% of patients with severe illness and 88% of those with critical illness received antibiotic treatment, even 18% of mild to moderate cases were prescribed antibiotics. Fluoroquinolones were the most commonly prescribed antibiotics (8,348), followed by third generation cephalosporins (5,729) and beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitors (3,822) as shown in Figure 1. Older age, severity of disease and underlying medical conditions contributed to overall prescription rates as well as days of antibiotic use significantly (Table 1).”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Although most of COVID-19 patients had mild to moderate illness, more than a quarter were prescribed antibiotics. Judicious use of broad-spectrum antibiotics is necessary for COVID-19 patients, considering the severity of disease and the risk of bacterial co-infection. Disclosures: All Authors: No reported disclosures.”

For more information on this research see: 1781. Antibiotic Prescription Trends of Patients with COVID-19: Analysis of National Health Insurance Data in Republic of Korea. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 2022,9(Supplement_2). (Open Forum Infectious Diseases - https://academic.oup.com/ofid). The publisher for Open Forum Infectious Diseases is Oxford University Press (OUP).

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofac492.1411.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Yunsang Choi, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seoungnam-si, Kyonggi-do, South Korea. Additional authors for this research include Minsun Kang, Dong Hoon Shin, Jongtak Jung, Seong Jin Choi, Nak-Hyun Kim, Song Mi Moon, Kyoung-Ho Song, Eu Suk Kim, Jaehun Jung, Hong Bin Kim.