Published on
Updated
Reading 2 mins.
in collaboration with
Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
Medical validation:
November 09, 2022
By disrupting the balance and diversity of intestinal bacteria, Covid-19 would promote the development of “bacteremia”, serious blood infections.
Day after day, the coronavirus continues to surprise us. According to a new study published in the journal NatureCommunicationsinfection with the virus would thus lead to a modification of the intestinal microbiota and could therefore be the cause of serious secondary bacterial infections.
An imbalance of the flora at the origin of bacterial superinfections
“Here we provide evidence that dysbiosis of the gut microbiome is associated with the translocation of bacteria into the blood during Covid-19, causing life-threatening secondary infections.“, confirms the team of virologists from NYU Langone Health.
To better understand these effects of Covid, the researchers infected dozens of mice intranasally with the coronavirus and then analyzed the bacterial composition of their stools. This is how they realized that the coronavirus could directly disrupt the microbiome, outside of any drug treatment (antibiotics).
They then took stool and blood samples from 96 hospitalized patients infected with the virus.
Result: these tests revealed a significant imbalance in the intestinal flora of the patients.
The majority of them showed a low diversity of bacteria (25% of the microbes belonged to a single bacterial species). In these same patients, bacterial species resistant to antibiotics had proliferated and finally, certain bacteria resistant to antimicrobials had migrated into the blood of 20% of hospitalized patients.
In addition, antibiotics (taken here at the start of the pandemic) seemed to aggravate the loss of microbial diversity.
“We are the first to detect effects on epithelial cells (of the intestinal wall, editor’s note) and to show that antibiotics can make the situation worse“, reveals as such Lucie Bernard-Raichon, main author of this work.
Conclusions, which do not surprise Dr. Kierzerk, medical director of Doctissimo.
“In the event of severe Covid, a dysfunction of all the “inflammatory cascades” appears: the digestive tract becomes permeable, the immune system goes into overdrive. It is the same mechanism as sepsis, a serious infection characterized by an inappropriate inflammatory response“, assures the expert, before adding “that it is likely that individuals are genetically predisposed to this problem“.
The emergency doctor specifies that it is essential not to further unbalance the microbiota with antibiotics. Any form of blind prevention should be avoided.