Clinical benefits of inhaled ciclesonide for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection: a retrospective study

Abstract

Background The successful management of patients infected with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with inhaled ciclesonide has been reported, however few studies have investigated its application among hospitalized patients. Methods This retrospective cohort study enrolled all adult patients admitted to our hospital with confirmed COVID-19 infection from May to June 2021. Critical patients who received mechanical ventilation within 24 h after admission and those who started ciclesonide more than 14 days after symptom onset were excluded. The in-hospital mortality rate was compared between those who did and did not receive inhaled ciclesonide. Results A total of 269 patients were enrolled, of whom 184 received inhaled ciclesonide and 85 did not. The use of ciclesonide was associated with lower in-hospital mortality (7.6% vs. 23.5%, p = 0.0003) and a trend of shorter hospital stay (12.0 (10.0–18.0) days vs. 13.0 (10.0–25.3) days, p = 0.0577). In subgroup analysis, the use of inhaled ciclesonide significantly reduced mortality in the patients with severe COVID-19 infection (6.8% vs. 50.0%, p < 0.0001) and in those with a high risk of mortality (16.4% vs. 43.2%, p = 0.0037). The use of inhaled ciclesonide also reduced the likelihood of receiving mechanical ventilation in the patients with severe COVID-19 infection. After multivariate analysis, inhaled ciclesonide remained positively correlated with a lower risk of in-hospital mortality (odds ratio: 0.2724, 95% confidence interval: 0.087–0.8763, p = 0.0291). Conclusions The use of inhaled ciclesonide in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 infection can reduce in-hospital mortality. Further randomized studies in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 infection are urgently needed.

Effect of Inhaled Ciclesonide in Non–Critically Ill Hospitalized Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Multicenter Observational Study in Japan

“…Sixth, we used systemic steroid administration within 2 days of admission in our analysis. We did not exclude systemic steroids from our analysis because a previous retrospective study showed that systemic steroids were not associated with in-hospital mortality rates in non–severely ill hospitalized patients with COVID-19 [ 32 ]. However, the use of this factor in analysis may have influenced our results.…”