Document Type
Article
Abstract
Background: Drug repurposing otherwise known as drug repositioning or drug re-profling is a time-tested approach in drug discovery through which new medical uses are being established for already known drugs. Antibi‑ otics are among the pharmacological agents being investigated for potential anti-SARS-COV-2 activities. The antibiot‑ ics are used either to resolve bacterial infections co-existing with COVID-19 infections or exploitation of their potential antiviral activities. Herein, we aimed to review the various antibiotics that have been repositioned for the manage‑ ment of COVID-19.
Methods: This literature review was conducted from a methodical search on PubMed and Web of Science regarding antibiotics used in patients with COVID-19 up to July 5, 2020.
Results: Macrolide and specifcally azithromycin is the most common antibiotic used in the clinical management of COVID-19. The other antibiotics used in COVID-19 includes teicoplanin, clarithromycin, doxycycline, tetracyclines, levo‑ foxacin, moxifoxacin, ciprofoxacin, and cefuroxime. In patients with COVID-19, antibiotics are used for their immunemodulating, anti-infammatory, and antiviral properties. The precise antiviral mechanism of most of these antibiotics has not been determined. Moreover, the use of some of these antibiotics against SARS-CoV-2 infection remains highly controversial and not widely accepted.
Conclusion: The heavy use of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic would likely worsen antibiotic resistance crisis. Consequently, antibiotic stewardship should be strengthened in order to prevent the impacts of COVID-19 on the antibiotic resistance crisis
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials, Volume 20, 2021.
Rights
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativeco mmons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/ zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
APA Citation
Yacouba, A., Olowo-okere, A., & Yunusa, I. (2021). Repurposing of antibiotics for clinical management of COVID-19: A narrative review. Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials, 20. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12941-021-00444-9