Recent advances in efficacy of corticosteroids as adjunct therapy for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia in children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

It has been recently shown that the adjunct use of corticosteroids in the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia shorten the time taken to reach clinical stability (time to clinical stability) in patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Considering the hyperglycemic effects of corticosteroids, there are concerns about the efficacy and safety of this therapy for children with CAP. Our objective is to evaluate the influence of recent advances in adjunct corticosteroid use and/or aerosolized antibiotic administration on admission to hospital with our main outcome being duration of fever and hospital stay, and additional outcomes as the time to clinical stability therapeutic efficacy, C-reactive protein and defervescence at 24, 48, and 72 hours after starting treatment in a well-defined cohort of children with community-acquired pneumonia. Therapeutic efficacy is defined as the rate of achieving clinical recovery with no fever, improvement or disappearance of cough, and improved or normal laboratory values. Five academic literature databases will be searched using Boolean keyword searches. Articles eligible for inclusion are those that present original research with the study topic as CAP, the study was designed as a randomized controlled trial (RCT) or clinical trial (CT) or an observational study with controls. The review will result in a narrative synthesis that summarizes the effectiveness of corticosteroid use in children.