COVID-19 Evidence Alerts
from McMaster PLUSTM

Current best evidence for clinical care (more info)

Treatment Yousefifard M, Mohamed Ali K, Aghaei A, et al. Corticosteroids on the Management of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): A Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis. Iran J Public Health. 2020 Aug;49(8):1411-1421. doi: 10.18502/ijph.v49i8.3863.
Abstract

BACKGROUND: We aimed to examine the available evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of corticosteroids on the management of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV).

METHOD: An extensive search was conducted in Medline, Embase, and Central databases until the end of March 2020, using keywords related to corticosteroids, COVID-19, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. The main outcome was considered to be the mortality rate, length of stay, virus clearance time, symptom improvement, and lung function improvement. The findings are presented as odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (95% CI).

RESULTS: Fifteen paper compromising 5 studies on COVID-19, 8 studies on SARS-CoV and 2 studies on MERS-CoV were included. One study was clinical trial and the rest were cohort. The analyses showed that corticosteroids were not reduce the mortality rate of COVID-19 (OR=1.08; 95% CI: 0.34 to 3.50) and SARS-CoV (OR=0.77; 95% CI: 0.34 to 1.3) patients, while they were associated with higher mortality rate of patients with MERS-CoV (OR = 2.52; 95% CI: 1.41 to 4.50). Moreover, it appears that corticosteroids administration would not be effective in shortening viral clearance time, length of hospitalization, and duration of relief symptoms following viral severe acute respiratory infections.

CONCLUSION: There is no evidences that corticosteroids are safe and effective on the treatment of severe acute respiratory infection when COVID-19 disease is suspected. Therefore, corticosteroids prescription in COVID-19 patients should be avoided.

Ratings
Discipline / Specialty Area Score
Hospital Doctor/Hospitalists
Internal Medicine
Intensivist/Critical Care
Comments from MORE raters

Hospital Doctor/Hospitalists rater

This is a very good analysis of studies already done. I particularly appreciate systematic review articles because it curates information that would take me me days to weeks to decipher.

Intensivist/Critical Care rater

This is a seriously flawed meta-analysis as it does not include the 4 largest studies (published in NEJM or JAMA). The meta-analyses of these trials gives an entirely different result.

Internal Medicine rater

All the studies on Covid-19 were from China. It's hard to see how this is comprehensive and could possibly be misleading. I would not report on this article.

Internal Medicine rater

It's hard to believe this article.