Patient selection flowchart.

Objective

Long-term steroid use increases the risk of developing Pneumocystis pneumonia (PcP), but there are limited reports on the relation of long-term steroid and PcP mortality.

Methods

Retrospective multicenter study to identify risk factors for PcP mortality, including average steroid dose before the first visit for PcP in non-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-PcP patients. We generated receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for 90-day all-cause mortality and the mean daily steroid dose per unit body weight in the preceding 10 to 90 days in 10-day increments. Patients were dichotomized by 90-day mortality and propensity score-based stabilized inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) adjusted covariates of age, sex, and underlying disease. Multivariate analysis with logistic regression assessed whether long-term corticosteroid use affected outcome.

Results

Of 133 patients with non-HIV-PcP, 37 died within 90 days of initial diagnosis. The area under the ROC curve for 1–40 days was highest, and the optimal cutoff point of median adjunctive corticosteroid dosage was 0.34 mg/kg/day. Past steroid dose, underlying interstitial lung disease and emphysema, lower serum albumin and lower lymphocyte count, higher lactate dehydrogenase, use of therapeutic pentamidine and therapeutic high-dose steroids were all significantly associated with mortality. Underlying autoimmune disease, past immunosuppressant use, and a longer time from onset to start of treatment, were associated lower mortality. Logistic regression analysis after adjusting for age, sex, and underlying disease with IPTW revealed that steroid dose 1–40 days before the first visit for PcP (per 0.1 mg/kg/day increment, odds ratio 1.36 [95% confidence interval = 1.16–1.66], P<0.001), low lymphocyte counts, and high lactate dehydrogenase revel were independent mortality risk factor, while respiratory failure, early steroid, and sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim for PcP treatment did not.

Conclusion

A steroid dose before PcP onset was strongly associated with 90-day mortality in non-HIV-PcP patients, emphasizing the importance of appropriate prophylaxis especially in this population.