The use of medications including steroids are not effective when it comes to improving respiratory symptoms or preventing hospitalization among infants suffering with bronchiolitis, as per a study appearing in an issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Nathan Kuppermann, M.D., a professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the University of California, Davis, chair of the PECARN network’s steering committee and the senior investigator of the study, said the study findings truly demonstrate the power of a research network such as Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) in attaining solutions for otherwise difficult-to-answer questions.

From News-Medical.Net:

The study compared hospitalization rates for 600 children between the ages of 2 months and 12 months who visited emergency rooms with moderate-to-severe bronchiolitis. Patients were treated with either a dose of dexamethasone (a glucocorticoid form of steroid medication) or a placebo and evaluated after one hour, and again at four hours. The hospital admission rate for both groups was identical at nearly 40 percent. Both groups improved during treatment, but the placebo group did as well as the group treated with active medication. The study was conducted in the emergency departments at 20 hospitals across the United States between November and April during a three-year period. Bronchiolitis is most common during the winter months.

“We learned that a commonly used treatment doesn’t work,” said Howard M. Corneli, M.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and the principal investigator on the study. “Now that we’ve demonstrated glucocorticoids aren’t effective in treating bronchiolitis, we can focus our efforts on finding better treatments and better preventive strategies.”

These findings by PECARN provide implications for medical practitioners in treating bronchiolitis, one of the most common causes of infant hospitalization.

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