Prescribing systemic steroids for acute respiratory tract infections in United States outpatient settings: A nationwide population-based cohort study

Background: Evidence and guidelines do not support use of systemic steroids for acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs), but such practice appears common. We aim to quantify such use and determine its predictors. Methods and findings: We conducted a cohort study based on a large United States national commercial claims database, the IBM MarketScan, to identify patients aged 18–64 years with an ARTI diagnosis (acute bronchitis, sinusitis, pharyngitis, otitis media, allergic rhinitis, influenza, pneumonia, and unspecified upper respiratory infections) recorded in ambulatory visits from 2007 to 2016. We excluded those with systemic steroid use in the prior year and an extensive list of steroid-indicated conditions, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and various autoimmune diseases. We calculated the proportion receiving systemic steroids within 7 days of the ARTI diagnosis and determined its significant predictors. We identified 9,763,710 patients with an eligible ARTI encounter (mean age 39.6, female 56.0%) and found 11.8% were prescribed systemic steroids (46.1% parenteral, 47.3% oral, 6.6% both). All ARTI diagnoses but influenza predicted receiving systemic steroids. There was high geographical variability: the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) of receiving parenteral steroids was 14.48 (95% confidence interval [CI] 14.23–14.72, p