Corticosteroids can change the way pneumonia patients are treated
Traditional therapy when combined with corticosteroids can prove to be an effective option and change the way pneumonia patients are treated, as per scientists at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Researchers showed that antibiotics and corticosteroids can prove their combined worth by providing great relief to pneumonia patients as was evident in a study available online and in a future issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
From News-Medical.Net:
In the current study, mice infected with the M pneumoniae bacterium were treated daily with a placebo, an antibiotic, a steroid, or a combination of the antibiotic and steroid in order to investigate the effect on M pneumoniae-induced airway inflammation. The animals were then evaluated after one, three and six days of therapy.
“It turns out that the group that got both the antibiotic and the steroids did the best,” Dr. Hardy said. “The inflammation in their lungs got significantly better.”
Although antimicrobials remain the primary therapy for M pneumoniae infection, there have been several reports in recent years about physicians adding steroids to the treatment regimen of patients with severe cases, Dr. Hardy said. The problem, he said, is that those were individual case reports.
Dr. Robert Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and the study’s senior author, said that steroids enhance lung inflammation and help in restoring health, while antibiotics kill the bug.
