COVID-19: Is Infection Along With Mycoplasma Or Other Bacteria Linked to Progression to a Lethal Outcome?

July 2, 2021

https://m.scirp.org/papers/100307

COVID-19 Coronavirus: Is Infection along with Mycoplasma or Other Bacteria Linked to Progression to a Lethal Outcome?

Garth L. Nicolson1*, Gonzalo Ferreira de Mattos2
 
Abstract: Most patients with COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus recover from this infection, but a significant fraction progress to a fatal outcome. As with some other RNA viruses, co-infection or activation of latent bacterial infections along with pre-existing health conditions in COVID-19 disease may be important in determining a fatal disease course. Mycoplasma spp. (M. pneumonaie, M. fermentans, etc.) have been routinely found as co-infections in a wide number of clinical conditions, and in some cases this has progressed to a fatal disease.
 
Although preliminary, Mycoplasma pneumoniae has been identified in COVID-19 disease, and the severity of some signs and symptoms in progressive COVID-19 patients could be due, in part, to Mycoplasma or other bacterial infections. Moreover, the presence of pathogenic Mycoplasma species or other pathogenic bacteria in COVID-19 disease may confer a perfect storm of cytokine and hemodynamic dysfunction, autoimmune activation, mitochondrial dysfunction and other complications that together cannot be easily corrected in patients with pre-existing health conditions.
 
The positive responses of only some COVID-19 patients to antibiotic and anti-malaria therapy could have been the result of suppression of Mycoplasma species and other bacterial co-infections in subsets of patients.
 
Thus it may be useful to use molecular tests to determine the presence of pathogenic Mycoplasma species and other pathogenic bacteria that are commonly found in atypical pneumonia in all hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and when positive results are obtained, these patients should treated accordingly in order to improve clinical responses and patient outcomes.  (See link for full article)
 
Important note:

Since we prepared this manuscript, there have been recent contributions, mostly brief preprint reports or letters that support our hypothesis. Charkraborty and Das [98] discussed the possibility that anaerobic bacteria, including Mycoplasma species, could be causing secondary infections in COVID-19 disease. They have proposed that such infections may be altering hemoglobin degradation and producing metabolites that affect hypoxia in progressing COVID-19 patients [98]. Stricker and Fesler [99] suggested that patients who have COVID-19 disease should not progress to a fatal outcome, if their therapy includes combinations of antibiotics (including minocycline or doxycycline) used for tick-borne infections [99]. As we discussed previously, Lyme disease patients often have mycoplasma co-infections that are sensitive to minocycline and doxycycline [62] [75].

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Category:

Lyme, Mycoplasma, research, Viruses

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