Comparative Effectiveness of Dexamethasone in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients in the United States

Introduction To compare the mortality of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 between those that required supplemental oxygen and received dexamethasone with a comparable set of patients who did not receive dexamethasone. Methods We utilized the Premier Health Database to identify hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 from July 1, 2020–January 31, 2021. Index date was when patients first initiated oxygen therapy. The primary endpoint was in-hospital mortality for patients receiving dexamethasone versus those not receiving dexamethasone 1-day pre- to 1-day post-index period. Secondary endpoints included 28-day mortality, time to in-hospital mortality, progression to invasive mechanical ventilation or death, time to discharge, and proportion discharged alive by day 28. Twenty-three models using weighting, matching, stratification, and regression were deployed through the concept of frequentist model average (FMA) to estimate the effect of dexamethasone on all-cause mortality up to the 28-day hospitalization period. Results A total of 1,208,881 patients with COVID-19 were screened; as an inpatient 255,216 used oxygen, and 251,536 were included in the analysis. In the dexamethasone group, odds of in-hospital mortality were higher than those of the comparator (FMA: odds ratio [OR] 1.15, 95% CI 1.08, 1.22). Using a best fit model, OR for in-hospital mortality was non-significant for the dexamethasone group compared with the comparator (OR 1.02, 95% CI 0.92, 1.14). Dexamethasone treatment was associated with poorer outcomes versus the comparator group across the majority of secondary endpoints, except for number of days in hospital, which was lower in the dexamethasone group versus the comparator group (mean difference − 2.14, 95% CI − 2.43, − 1.47). Conclusions Hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 who required supplemental oxygen and received dexamethasone did not have a survival benefit versus similar patients not receiving dexamethasone. The dexamethasone group was not associated with favorable responses for outcomes such as progression to death or mechanical ventilation and time to in-hospital death.