Khan N, et al. - The present study was undertaken to evaluate the toxicities of glucocorticoids (GC) in sarcoidosis populations. The results of this study showed that glucocorticoids were related to clinically important toxicities in sarcoidosis patients, associated with both the cumulative dose and duration of treatment.

Methods

• A retrospective cohort study was performed of all recently diagnosed sarcoidosis patients who had the entirety of their medical care in a single health system.
• Using Cox proportional hazards analysis, the authors analyzed the time to development of a composite toxicity end-point, including diabetes, hypertension, weight gain, hyperlipidemia, low bone density and ocular complications of GC.

Results

• The analysis in this study showed that 105 patients were ever treated with GC, whereas forty-nine were not treated during a median follow-up of 101 months.
• It was observed in the findings that GC-treated patients developed 1.3 ± 1.1 toxicities during therapy, versus 0.6 ± 1.0 in the non-treated group.
• The hazard ratio for ever-treated patients was 2.37 (1.34–4.17) for the composite end-point after adjustment for age, gender, race and preexisting conditions.
• Age and the presence of preexisting conditions also were related to reaching the end-point.
• Findings revealed that similar effects were seen when investigated for cumulative GC dose and for duration of GC use.
• For individual end-points, weight gain (HR 2.04) and new hypertension (HR 3.36) were related to any use of GC.