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       #Post#: 5548--------------------------------------------------
       Antibiotic used in COVID patients tied to increased signs of
       antibiotic resistance 
   DIR By: Masked Man
       Date: March 18, 2026, 7:34 pm
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       March 18 2026
       "In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 75% of
       hospitalized COVID patients received antibiotics on admission,
       primarily because of limited treatment options and concerns
       about bacterial coinfections.
       One of those antibiotics was azithromycin, a macrolide
       antibiotic commonly used for respiratory infections. Use of
       azithromycin was driven in part by a study, now retracted, that
       suggested it could improve outcomes in COVID patients when used
       in combination with the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine.
       Although subsequent trials would find the combination had no
       benefit for COVID patients, widespread azithromycin use
       continued for several months.
       Early in the pandemic azithromycin was “routinely used despite
       the absence of data supporting a clinical benefit,” according to
       Michael Pulia, MD, PhD, an emergency physician and associate
       professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of
       Medicine and Public Health.
       The use of an antibiotic to treat a viral infection reflected
       the desperation of “having so many ill patients and just wanting
       to give them something,” said Charles Lanegelier, MD, PhD, an
       infectious disease physician and professor at the University of
       California San Francisco.
       “People were scrambling for anything,” Langelier said.
       Now, in a new study this week in Nature Microbiology, Langelier
       and a team of US researchers show that, in addition to having no
       clinical benefit for COVID patients, use of azithromycin was
       associated with potentially harmful changes in the upper
       respiratory microbiome and increased expression of
       antibiotic-resistance genes after only one day of exposure.
       “I think it really tells us that inappropriate or unnecessary
       use of azithromycin has direct and fairly rapid biological
       consequences in terms of driving antimicrobial resistance,”
       Langelier told CIDRAP News..."
       LINK:
  HTML https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/antibiotic-used-covid-patients-tied-increased-signs-antibiotic-resistance
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