Children with bronchiolitis do not benefit from treatment with popular steroid

Treatment involving a common steroid, dexamethasone, is not beneficial for young children suffering from bronchiolitis as per a recent study by DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan.

It was disclosed in the study that dexamethasone-based treatment is not effective when it comes to improving the associated disease symptoms or reducing incidents of hospitalization.

The findings of this research study appeared in an issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

From News-Medical.Net:

Bronchiolitis is the leading cause of hospitalization for infants in the United States and accounts for more than 100,000 admissions each year. Hospital charges associated with the disease exceed $700 million annually. According to Dr. Mahajan, prescribing dexamethasone is a common practice among emergency room physicians and pediatricians to treat acute bronchiolitis. "Corticosteroids are commonly used to treat bronchiolitis although evidence of their effectiveness is limited." The findings of this study resolve controversy from prior research and are expected to help guide treatment for the most common cause of infant hospitalization.
Given the results of this study, though there is really no best treatment for children, researchers now can concentrate on finding better treatment and better preventative strategies.
DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan treats 500-600 patients annually for bronchiolitis. Hospital length of stay, later medical visits or admissions, and adverse events were also evaluated in the study.
The study lead investigators note that glucocorticoid medications still play an important role in other respiratory illnesses of childhood, such as asthma and croup. They point out these medications are not the androgenic steroids sometimes abused by athletes, and that the side effects seen with long-term steroid use are not a risk in the short-course treatments used for croup and asthma attacks.

Prashant Mahajan, M.D., M.P.H, M.B.A, DMC Children's Hospital vice chief of pediatric emergency medicine and associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine was a lead co- investigator in this nationwide study involving 600 infants between the age of 2-12 months.