Steroids provide dramatic recovery results from Pneumonia patients
Relief is finally coming to the way of Pneumonia patients.
Scientists at the UT Southwestern Medical Center have noted that a combination of traditional antimicrobial therapy and corticosteroids is an effective option for facilitating faster recovery from disease in Pneumonia patients than with antibiotics alone.
From Sciencedaily.com:
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.
“They never had a control group, so it was impossible to tell what impact the addition of steroids had on recovery,” he said.
The new findings not only suggest that giving antibiotics with steroids can help individuals with pneumonia get better faster, but also suggest a potentially more effective therapy for someone in the midst of an asthma attack due to M pneumoniae infection. Up to 20 percent of asthma attacks in children and adults have been shown to be triggered by this bacterium.
Antibiotics and steroids form a synergy together. While the bug is killed by antibiotics, steroids treat lung inflammation, as per Dr. Robert Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and the study’s senior author.
