Steroid treatment is not an effective option for providing relief to infants with a common and potentially serious viral lower respiratory infection called bronchiolitis, as per a new study co-authored by Dr. Joan Bregstein of the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center.

The study suggested that steroids do not help in preventing hospitalization or improve respiratory symptoms for bronchiolitis that is believed to be the common cause of hospitalization among infants.

From News-Medical.Net:

“Our study shows that treating bronchiolitis with steroids doesn’t work. We hope this study will resolve some of the uncertainty for physicians and families, as we move forward in developing better means of preventing and treating the infection,” says Dr. Bregstein, site principal investigator and emergency medicine pediatrician at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Current recommendations suggest that simple supportive care is the best available treatment for bronchiolitis. Researchers note that steroid-based medications still play an important role in other respiratory illnesses of childhood such as asthma and croup. They point out these medications are not the androgenic steroids sometimes abused by athletes, and that the side effects seen with long-term steroid use are not a risk in the short-course treatments used for croup and asthma attacks.

The multicenter study was published in the July 26 New England Journal of Medicine and conducted by the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN).

It was highlighted that simply supportive care is the most effective option for bronchiolitis though steroid-based medications still play an important role in respiratory illnesses of childhood such as asthma and croup.

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