ICS use for COPD treatment increases incidence of pneumonia, reduces mortality risk

DENVER — Inhaled corticosteroids put patients with COPD at an increased risk for incident pneumonia, however there appears to be a counterbalancing beneficial effect on pneumonia-associated mortality, according to study results presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference.“What we found was, when looking at the outcome of pneumonia in randomized control trials, the [trials] showed a significantly increased risk of incident pneumonia,” Ena Gupta, MD, MPH, internal medicine resident at the University of Florida Jacksonville Healthcare Inc., told Healio.com/Pulmonology. “Almost a 60% increase [as well as in] the observational studies which has been long shown in a lot of studies before [our] meta-analysis that inhaled corticosteroids have an increased risk of pneumonia associated with them in COPD patients. But, what was interesting was when we looked at pneumonia-associated mortality and all-cause mortality, you would expect that since pneumonia is a cause of mortality in COPD patients, you would expect the people who have more COPD would be higher, but the findings were a little bit different.”