According to a large multicenter study by pediatric researchers, corticosteroids given to children who are hospitalized for bacterial meningitis do not provide a benefit in survival or in reduced hospital stays. This finding is in contrast to previous studies which involved hospitalized adults.

Doctor Samir Shah, leader of the study, pointed out that children are not just small adults to be readily prescribed with corticosteroids. He urged clinicians to consider whether the problems associated with corticosteroid use, such as gastrointestinal bleeding, outweigh any potential benefits.

From Bio-Medicine:

Shah’s team analyzed medical records of 2,780 children with bacterial meningitis at 27 U.S. pediatric hospitals from 2001 to 2006. The median age of the children was nine months. Approximately 9 percent, or 248, of the children studied received corticosteroids, with steroid use doubling during the study period, from under 6 percent of children in 2001 to 12 percent in 2006.

There was no significant difference in mortality nor in time to hospital discharge, between children who received corticosteroids and those who did not. Overall, unadjusted mortality rates were 6 percent among children receiving corticosteroids, versus 4 percent among those not receiving them. There also was no significant difference in those outcomes between those receiving and not receiving corticosteroids in the subsets of children with meningitis caused by pneumococcal bacteria or by meningococcal bacteria.

He added, “Our study shows the need for a further study in children — a large randomized clinical trial to examine all outcomes of steroid use, before the use of these medicines becomes routine in children with bacterial meningitis.”

Meningitis is an inflammation of the membrane lining the brain. The bacterial form is relatively rare in children, with an incidence of about eight in 100,000 in the U.S. However, bacterial meningitis is potentially life-threatening, and requires hospitalization and treatment with antibiotics.

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