Table 1: at the end of this file.
2.5. Statistical Analysis
Minitab version 19.0 software was used for statistical analysis. All
data was expressed as continuous variables. Continuous data was
expressed by median for normally distributed variable i.e. age; whereas
absolute numbers were expressed as percentages. The paired t-test was
used to compare continuous variables of normal distribution and
non-normal distribution, respectively. We used Pearson Coefficient to
show association between the variables. Relationship of one response and
multiple predictors was examined using linear regression with best
fitted model. Mortality was evaluated for bacterial and viral
co-infections by using binary logistic expression and expressed as odds
ratio. MANOVA (multivariate analysis of
variance) was used to analyze mortality in the presence of co-infection
and comorbidities and it was expressed as p-value. The patients were
grouped by disease severity, comorbidities and co-infection or not.
Factors were adjusted for age and gender. A 2-sided α of less than 0.05
was considered statistically significant.
3. Results
We investigated co-infection in 48 COVID-19 patients (including 37 males
and 11 females), the male to female ratio was 3:1. Median age of our
study population was 52 years (1-92). Fourteen patients (29%) needed
admission to intensive care unit (ICU cases). The remaining 34 patients
(71%) did not require any admission and were classified as non-ICU
cases. We found co-infections in thirty-four (71%) patients. Although
severity of disease was negatively correlated (r= -0.09) with presence
of a co-infection (p=0.53), it had a positive correlation with
co-infecting viruses (r=0.1, p=0.42) by Pearson Coefficient as shown in
Figure 1. Furthermore, statistically significant inverse association was
observed (r=-0.28, p=0.04) between bacterial co-infection and ICU
admission. In other words, this association indicates less likelihood of
ICU admission with bacterial co-infection. The most commonly found
co-infecting virus was influenza A H1N1 in 17 patients (36%). Chlamydia
pneumoniae was the most prevalent co-infecting bacteria found in 13
patients (28 %). Other organisms detected were adenovirus in 10
patients and S. aureus in 4 patients (Figure 1). It was noticed that
4/17 (23.5%) patients with H1N1 had coexisting Chlamydia pneumoniae.