SynthesisJournal of infection and public health2020
Association of corticosteroids use and outcomes in COVID-19 patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Journal of infection and public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 74 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pulse versus nonpulse steroid regimens in patients with coronavirus disease 2019: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of medical virology · 2022Pooled it
- Effect of corticosteroid therapy on mortality in COVID-19 patients-A systematic review and meta-analysis.Reviews in medical virology · 2022Pooled it
- Systemic administration of glucocorticoids, cardiovascular complications and mortality in patients hospitalised with COVID-19, SARS, MERS or influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised trials.Pharmacological research · 2022Pooled it
- Tocilizumab and Systemic Corticosteroids in the Management of Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2021Pooled it
- Corticosteroid use in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis on clinical outcomes.Critical care (London, England) · 2020Pooled it
- Organizing pneumonia in hospitalized COVID-19 patients: risk factors and long-term outcomes.Pneumonia (Nathan Qld.) · 2025Article
- A retrospective study of the clinical diagnosis and treatment of 158 cases of COVID-19.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Corticosteroid treatment prediction using chest X-ray and clinical data.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Article
- Efficient clinical decision-making process via AI-based multimodal data fusion: A COVID-19 case study.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Problematic meta-analyses: Bayesian and frequentist perspectives on combining randomized controlled trials and non-randomized studies.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- The effectiveness of glucocorticoid treatment in post-COVID-19 pulmonary involvement.Pneumonia (Nathan Qld.) · 2024Article
- Article
- The Efficacy of Oral/Intravenous Corticosteroid Use in COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review.Journal of experimental pharmacology · 2024Review
- Review
- Efficacy and safety of corticosteroid regimens for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients: a meta-analysis.Future virology · 2022Review
- Impact of Early Corticosteroids on Preventing Clinical Deterioration in Non-critically Ill Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19: A Multi-hospital Cohort Study.Infectious diseases and therapy · 2022Article
- Rehabilitation of peripheral facial palsy associated with COVID-19 in a child: A case report.Annals of physical and rehabilitation medicine · 2022Article
- Corticosteroids use for COVID-19: an overview of systematic reviews.Le infezioni in medicina · 2022Review
- Conversations With Individuals on the Fence about CV-19 Vaccination: Analysis of Lives Saved by Vaccine vs. Natural Infection Mortality and Other Reflections.Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives · 2022Article
- Transmembrane serine protease 2 and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 anti-inflammatory receptors for COVID-19/inflammatory bowel diseases treatment.World journal of gastroenterology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTo systematically review the literature about the association between systemic corticosteroid therapy (CST) and outcomes of COVID-19 patients.
methodsWe searched Medline, Embase, EBM Reviews, Scopus, Web of Science, and preprints up to July 20, 2020. We included observational studies and randomized controlled trials (RCT) that assessed COVID-19 patients treated with CST. We pooled adjusted effect estimates of mortality and other outcomes using a random effect model, among studies at low or moderate risk for bias. We assessed the certainty of evidence for each outcome using the GRADE approach.
resultsOut of 1067 citations screened for eligibility, one RCT and 19 cohort studies were included (16,977 hospitalized patients). Ten studies (1 RCT and 9 cohorts) with 10,278 patients examined the effect of CST on short term mortality. The pooled adjusted RR was 0.92 (95% CI 0.69-1.22, I
conclusionIn this systematic review, as of July 2020, heterogeneous and low certainty cumulative evidence based on observational studies and one RCT suggests that CST was not associated with reduction in short-term mortality but possibly with a delay in viral clearance in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 of different severities. However, the discordant results between the single RCT and observational studies as well as the heterogeneity observed across observational studies, call for caution in using observational data and suggests the need for more RCTs to identify the clinical and biochemical characteristics of patients' population that could benefit from CST.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.