In our latest episode, Dr. Farrah Kheradmand (Baylor College of Medicine) interviews Dr. Kevin Harrod (University of Alabama at Birmingham) about his article by Patton et al. on community-acquired bacterial coinfections and COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic when physicians were treating critically ill COVID patients, there was no standard definition for bacterial coinfections in this cohort. However, as the field has moved forward with understanding how bacterial coinfections contribute to the mortality of COVID patients, Dr. Harrod and co-authors have worked to refine the definition of bacterial coinfections to provide a more unified way to report the prevalence of this important clinical problem. While it is often necessary to treat critically ill hospitalized COVID patients with antibiotics before sampling or culture results, Dr. Harrod and co-authors identify that this may mask the true prevalence of bacterial coinfections. Listen as Dr. Kheradmand and Dr. Harrod discuss linkages between carriage, viral infection, and secondary bacterial infections, as well as the pathophysiological ways that fungi may coinfect COVID patients. Are patients with underlying cystic fibrosis more prone to COVID infection? Listen now to learn more.

Michael John Patton, Amit Gaggar, Matthew Might, Nathaniel Erdmann, Carlos J. Orihuela, and Kevin S. Harrod Community-acquired bacterial coinfections and COVID-19 Physiological Reviews, published October 16, 2023. DOI: 10.1152/physrev.00010.2023