ArticleJournal of virus eradication2026
Corticosteroids with or without antiviral therapy in elderly patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the Omicron era: A multicenter real-world study.
Article in Journal of virus eradication, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Elderly patients remain at high risk for adverse outcomes from COVID-19 despite the generally reduced pathogenicity of the Omicron variant. Corticosteroids are commonly used in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, particularly in those with more severe disease, while antiviral agents inhibit viral replication. However, evidence comparing corticosteroid monotherapy with corticosteroid-antiviral combination therapy in elderly hospitalized patients remains limited. Methods: This multicenter retrospective cohort study included hospitalized patients aged ≥60 years with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 at two tertiary hospitals in China, all of whom received systemic corticosteroid therapy during hospitalization. Patients were classified into either a corticosteroid monotherapy group or corticosteroid-antiviral combination therapy group. To reduce confounding, inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) based on propensity scores was applied. The primary outcome was all-cause in-hospital mortality, and mechanical ventilation was assessed as a secondary outcome. Results: A total of 624 elderly hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who received systemic corticosteroid therapy were included in the IPTW analysis (290 in the corticosteroid group and 334 in the combination therapy group). After weighting, baseline characteristics were well balanced between groups. The weighted incidence of in-hospital mortality was lower in the combination therapy group than in the corticosteroid monotherapy group (8.09% vs 13.47%; OR 0.566, 95% CI 0.333-0.961; p = 0.035). No statistically significant difference was observed in the risk of mechanical ventilation between groups (OR 1.286, 95% CI 0.924-1.789; p = 0.136). Conclusions: Among elderly hospitalized patients with COVID-19 during the Omicron period who received systemic corticosteroid therapy corticosteroids combined with antiviral therapy were associated with lower in-hospital mortality compared with corticosteroid monotherapy, while no significant difference was observed in mechanical ventilation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.