Dexamethasone 12 mg versus 6 mg for patients with COVID-19 and severe hypoxaemia: a pre-planned, secondary Bayesian analysis of the COVID STEROID 2 trial

Anders Granholm*, Marie Warrer Munch, Sheila Nainan Myatra, Bharath Kumar Tirupakuzhi Vijayaraghavan, Maria Cronhjort, Rebecka Rubenson Wahlin, Stephan M. Jakob, Luca Cioccari, Maj-Brit Nørregaard Kjær, Gitte Kingo Vesterlund, Tine Sylvest Meyhoff, Marie Helleberg, Morten Hylander Møller, Thomas Benfield, Balasubramanian Venkatesh, Naomi E. Hammond, Sharon Micallef, Abhinav Bassi, Oommen John, Vivekanand JhaKlaus Tjelle Kristiansen, Charlotte Suppli Ulrik, Vibeke Lind Jørgensen, Margit Smitt, Morten H. Bestle, Anne Sofie Andreasen, Lone Musaeus Poulsen, Bodil Steen Rasmussen, Anne Craveiro Brøchner, Thomas Strøm, Anders Møller, Mohd Saif Khan, Ajay Padmanaban, Jigeeshu Vasishtha Divatia, Sanjith Saseedharan, Kapil Borawake, Farhad Kapadia, Subhal Dixit, Rajesh Chawla, Urvi Shukla, Pravin Amin, Michelle S. Chew, Christian Aage Wamberg, Christian Gluud, Theis Lange, Anders Perner

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

59 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

PURPOSE: We compared dexamethasone 12 versus 6 mg daily for up to 10 days in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and severe hypoxaemia in the international, randomised, blinded COVID STEROID 2 trial. In the primary, conventional analyses, the predefined statistical significance thresholds were not reached. We conducted a pre-planned Bayesian analysis to facilitate probabilistic interpretation.

METHODS: We analysed outcome data within 90 days in the intention-to-treat population (data available in 967 to 982 patients) using Bayesian models with various sensitivity analyses. Results are presented as median posterior probabilities with 95% credible intervals (CrIs) and probabilities of different effect sizes with 12 mg dexamethasone.

RESULTS: The adjusted mean difference on days alive without life support at day 28 (primary outcome) was 1.3 days (95% CrI -0.3 to 2.9; 94.2% probability of benefit). Adjusted relative risks and probabilities of benefit on serious adverse reactions was 0.85 (0.63 to 1.16; 84.1%) and on mortality 0.87 (0.73 to 1.03; 94.8%) at day 28 and 0.88 (0.75 to 1.02; 95.1%) at day 90. Probabilities of benefit on days alive without life support and days alive out of hospital at day 90 were 85 and 95.7%, respectively. Results were largely consistent across sensitivity analyses, with relatively low probabilities of clinically important harm with 12 mg on all outcomes in all analyses.

CONCLUSION: We found high probabilities of benefit and low probabilities of clinically important harm with dexamethasone 12 mg versus 6 mg daily in patients with COVID-19 and severe hypoxaemia on all outcomes up to 90 days.

Original languageEnglish
JournalIntensive Care Medicine
Volume48
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)45-55
Number of pages11
ISSN0342-4642
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

© 2021. Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

Keywords

  • Bayesian analysis
  • COVID-19
  • Corticosteroids
  • Critical illness
  • Hypoxaemia

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