Clinical question: Does corticosteroid treatment shorten systemic illness in patients admitted to the hospital for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP)?
Background: Pneumonia is the third-leading cause of death worldwide. Studies have yielded conflicting data about the benefit of adding systemic corticosteroids for treatment of CAP.
Study design: Double-blind, multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.
Setting: Seven tertiary care hospitals in Switzerland.
Synopsis: Seven hundred eighty-four patients hospitalized for CAP were randomized to receive either oral prednisone 50 mg daily for seven days or placebo, with the primary endpoint being time to stable vital signs. The intention-to-treat analysis found that the median time to clinical stability was 1.4 days earlier in the prednisone group (hazard ratio 1.33, 95% CI 1.15-1.50, P<0.0001) and that length of stay and IV antibiotics were reduced by one day; this effect was valid across all PSI classes and was not dependent on age. Pneumonia-associated complications in the two groups did not differ at 30 days, though the prednisone group had a higher incidence of hyperglycemia requiring insulin.
Because all study locations were in a single, fairly homogenous northern European country, care should be taken when hospitalists apply these findings to their patient population, and the risks of hyperglycemia requiring insulin should be taken into consideration.
Bottom line: Systemic steroids may reduce the time to clinical stability in patients with CAP.
Citation: Blum CA, Nigro N, Briel M, et al. Adjunct prednisone therapy for patients with community-acquired pneumonia: a multicenter, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial. Lancet. 2015;385(9977):1511-1518.
