Late Breaking Abstract - Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of Co-infection: respiratory tuberculosis and COVID-19

<bold>Objective:</bold> to determine clinical and epidemiological features of the occurrence and course of a new coronavirus infection in patients with respiratory tuberculosis. <bold>Materials and methods:</bold> study included 84 patients, who were admitted to hospital from September 2020 to April 2021. The I group consisted of 44 patients with a combination of TB and COVID-19, the II group - 20 patients with TB without COVID-19, the III group - 20 patients with COVID-19 without TB. The groups are comparable in age and gender (p>0.05). Men predominated (68-76%), average age was 39 [32; 50] years. TB and COVID diagnoses were verified in all patients. <bold>Results:</bold> HIV infection was more often diagnosed in group I (81% vs. 50% and 5%, p<0.05), median 6.2 [5.1; 7.0] years. TB was diagnosed for the first time in 22% of patients of group I against the background of COVID-19. Half of patients of group I had chronic hepatitis B or C, every third - COPD (p<0.05). The viral load (HIV RNA copies/ml) didn’t have statistically significant differences in groups I and II. The frequency of opportunistic diseases was 2.7 [2.3; 3.1] in group I, which is statistically significantly higher compared to group II and III (1.7 [1.3–1.9] and 0.7 [0.2–1.0], p = 0.04). MDR patients predominated (66%) in group I, XDR patients (40%) (p>0.05) - in group II. Drug dependence was in 63% of patients of group I. <bold>Conclusions:</bold> COVID-19 is most often diagnosed in patients with tuberculosis in the presence of HIV infection and hepatitis, including on the background of drug addiction, does not have a distinctive clinical and radiological picture. Among patients with COVID-19 and TB, every fifth patient was diagnosed with TB for the first time.