Long and short-term effect of prednisolone in hospitalized infants with acute bronchiolitis.

Abstract

To assess long and short-term effect of prednisolone in hospitalized infants with bronchiolitis. A randomized and controlled trial was carried out at the Federal University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande-RS, Brazil. Twenty-eight patients were randomly allocated prednisolone (1 mg/kg/day for 5 days) plus standard care, and 24 patients allocated standard care alone. The primary endpoint was the prevalence of post-bronchiolitis wheezing at 1, 3, 6 and 12 months after hospital discharge. The secondary endpoints were: length of hospital stay, duration of oxygen therapy and time to clinical improvement during the hospitalization. There were no significant differences between the prednisolone and control group in the prevalence of post-bronchioltis wheezing at 1 month (73.1 vs 83.3%, P = 0.5), 3 months (73.1 vs 79.2%, P = 0.7), 6 months (65.4 vs 66.7%, P = 0.9) and 12 months (50.0 vs 58.3%, P = 0.5) after hospital discharge. No reduction was observed in the prednisolone group, compared with the control group, in terms of length of hospital stay (6.0 vs 5.0 days, P = 0.7), duration of oxygen therapy (24.0 vs 24.0 h, P = 0.4) and time to clinical resolution (4.0 vs 4.0 days, P = 0.8). Prednisolone has no significant effect on reducing the prevalence of post-bronchiolitis wheezing and on improving the acute course of illness in hospitalized infants with bronchiolitis.