Tuberculosis and COVID-19 co-infection: A case series from Iran

Abstract

Aims and objectives: Because the world is mobilized with all its might to fight the COVID-19 epidemic, control of common but deadly diseases such as tuberculosis may be neglected. With a conservative estimate and modeling working, we can show that if too much attention to the COVID-19 continuing it can leads to a 25% reduction in global TB diagnosis by 3 months and TB mortality will increase by 13% and this brings us back to the level of TB mortality we had 5 years ago. Between 2020 and 2025, 1.4 million TB deaths could be recorded as a direct consequence of COVID-19. Therefore, ensuring the continuation of basic services and operations to deal with long-standing health problems like tuberculosis or other similar diseases to protect the lives of people is very important. Methods: This study is a case series has been performed in three hospital centers in Tehran where respiratory and infectious patients were treated. We report on eleven cases of patients who were either unaware of their tuberculosis or of their COVID-19 and after visiting a medical center, they found out that they have both of them. Results: Of the eleven patients in this study, seven were male and four were female, with a mean age of 56.6 years (minimum age 27 years and maximum age 91 years). Five patients were previously diagnosed with tuberculosis and six patients were initially admitted with a diagnosis of COVID-19. Seven were Afghans and four were Iranians. Ten patients had respiratory tuberculosis and one had both pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis. Fever, productive cough, and hemoptysis were present in all of them. After clinical suspicion, spiral lung CT-scan, COVID-19 RT-PCR assay, smear and culture of sputum for mycobacterium tuberculosis, were performed and finally simultaneous tuberculosis and COVID-19 co-infection was diagnosed. Two patients died in the first week of treatment after being admitted to the intensive care unit. However, both patients also had diabetes mellitus and hypertension. Nine other cases were transferred to the tuberculosis unit after 7 to 10 days of treatment in the COVID-19 ward. Conclusions: Tuberculosis and COVID-19 are both common infections of the respiratory system and have common signs and symptoms and these similarities may cause overlapping the two diseases. While experience with COVID-19 infection in TB patients is still limited, it is predicted that people with TB and COVID-19 may have poorer treatment outcomes, especially if TB treatment is postponed.