COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA): Risk factors and development of a predictive score for critically ill COVID-19 patients.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19-associated pulmonary aspergillosis (CAPA) is a major complication of critically ill COVID-19 patients, with a high mortality rate and potentially preventable. Thus, identifying patients at high risk of CAPA would be of great interest. We intended to develop a clinical prediction score capable of stratifying patients according to the risk for CAPA at ICU admission. METHODS: Single centre retrospective case-control study. A case was defined as a patient diagnosed with CAPA according to 2020 ECMM/ISHAM consensus criteria. 2 controls were selected for each case among critically ill COVID-19 patients. RESULTS: 28 CAPA patients and 56-matched controls were included. Factors associated with CAPA included old age (68 years vs. 62, p = .033), active smoking (17.9% vs. 1.8%, p = .014), chronic respiratory diseases (48.1% vs. 26.3%, p = .043), chronic renal failure (25.0% vs. 3.6%, p = .005), chronic corticosteroid treatment (28.6% vs. 1.8%, p < .001), tocilizumab therapy (92.9% vs. 66.1%, p = .008) and high APACHE II at ICU admission (median 13 vs. 10 points, p = .026). A score was created including these variables, which showed an area under the receiver operator curve of 0.854 (95% CI 0.77-0.92). A punctuation below 6 had a negative predictive value of 99.6%. A punctuation of 10 or higher had a positive predictive value of 27.9%. CONCLUSION: We present a clinical prediction score that allowed to stratify critically ill COVID-19 patients according to the risk for developing CAPA. This CAPA score would allow to target preventive measures. Further evaluation of the score, as well as the utility of these targeted preventive measures, is needed.

A Retrospective Controlled Cohort Study of the Impact of Glucocorticoid Treatment in SARS-CoV-2 Infection Mortality.

Evidence to support the use of steroids in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia is lacking. We aim to determine the impact of steroid use for COVID-19 pneumonia on hospital mortality. We performed a single-center retrospective cohort study in a university hospital in Madrid, Spain, during March of 2020. To determine the role of steroids in in-hospital mortality, patients admitted with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pneumonia and treated with steroids were compared to patients not treated with steroids, and we adjusted with a propensity score for patients on steroid treatment. Survival times were compared using the log rank test. Different steroid regimens were compared and adjusted with a second propensity score. During the study period, 463 out of 848 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia fulfilled inclusion criteria. Among them, 396 (46.7%) patients were treated with steroids and 67 patients were not. Global mortality was 15.1%. The median time to steroid treatment from symptom onset was 10 days (interquartile range [IQR], 8 to 13 days). In-hospital mortality was lower in patients treated with steroids than in controls (13.9% [55/396] versus 23.9% [16/67]; hazard ratio [HR], 0.51 [95% confidence interval, 0.27 to 0.96]; P = 0.044). Steroid treatment reduced mortality by 41.8% relative to the mortality with no steroid treatment (relative risk reduction, 0.42 [95% confidence interval, 0.048 to 0.65]). Initial treatment with 1 mg/kg of body weight/day of methylprednisolone versus steroid pulses was not associated with in-hospital mortality (13.5% [42/310] versus 15.1% [13/86]; odds ratio [OR], 0.880 [95% confidence interval, 0.449 to 1.726]; P = 0.710). Our results show that the survival of patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia is higher in patients treated with glucocorticoids than in those not treated. Rates of in-hospital mortality were not different between initial regimens of 1 mg/kg/day of methylprednisolone and glucocorticoid pulses.