THE MICROBIAL LANDSCAPE OF PHARYNX AND ITS CHANGES IN POST-COVID PERIOD

Introduction. The microbial landscape of a pharynx at the period of COVID-19 pandemic, compared to the pre-Covid period, have a great practical and scientific importance.

Purpose. We determine the microbial landscape in patients with pharyngitis during the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection COVID-19 and the dynamics of antibiotic resistance of the most common types of microorganisms in comparison with the “pre-Covid” period.

Materials and methods. We estimated 403 samples of throat culture from patients with pharyngitis. The main group consists of 308 samples from patients during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022 years). The comparison group consists of 95 samples taken in 2019 year.

Results. We reveal the following features of throat culture: Gram-positive flora, mainly S. aureus, decreases by 2 times, and Candida spp. increases by 2 times in patients with pharyngitis during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared with the pre-Covid period, p < 0.05. Kl. pneumonia slightly increases up to 18 % in 2020. Enterococcus spp., on the contrary, had a slow but steady trend towards an increase from 5 % in 2019 to 12 % in 2022 (p > 0.05), which may indicate the development of pharyngeal dysbiosis that occurs during treatment of COVID-19 infection.

Throat culture bacteria increase resistance to semisynthetic penicillins: S. aureus rom 4 % to 12–30 % (p < 0.05), Klebsiella pneumoniae from 33 % in 2019 to 54 % in 2021 (p < 0.05), with a subsequent decrease to 28 % in 2022. Klebsiella pneumoniae also increases resistance to fluoroquinolones from 25 % in 2019 to 40 % in 2021 (p < 0.05).

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