Corticosteroid therapy for critically ill patients with COVID-19: A structured summary of a study protocol for a prospective meta-analysis of randomized trials
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Primary objective: To estimate the effect of corticosteroids compared with usual care or placebo on mortality up to 28 days after randomization. Secondary objectives: To examine whether the effect of corticosteroids compared with usual care or placebo on mortality up to 28 days after randomization varies between subgroups related to treatment characteristics, disease severity at the time of randomization, patient characteristics, or risk of bias. To examine the effect of corticosteroids compared with usual care or placebo on serious adverse events. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Both placebo-controlled and open-label trials are eligible. PARTICIPANTS: Hospitalised, critically ill patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. INTERVENTION AND COMPARATOR: Intervention groups will have received therapeutic doses of a steroid (dexamethasone, hydrocortisone or methylprednisolone) with IV or oral administration immediately after randomization. The comparator groups will have received standard of care or usual care or placebo. MAIN OUTCOME: All-cause mortality up to 28 days after randomization. SEARCH METHODS: Systematic searching of clinicaltrials.gov , EudraCT, the WHO ISRCTN registry, and the Chinese clinical trials registry. Additionally, research and WHO networks will be asked for relevant trials. RISK OF BIAS ASSESSMENTS: These will be based on the Cochrane RoB 2 tool, and will use structured information provided by the trial investigators on a form designed for this prospective meta-analysis. We will use GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence. STATISTICAL ANALYSES: statistics. Evidence for subgroup effects will be quantified by ratios of odds ratios comparing effects in the subgroups, and corresponding interaction p-values. Comparisons between subgroups defined by trial characteristics will be made using random-effects meta-regression. Comparisons between subgroups defined by patient characteristics will be made by estimating trial-specific ratios of odds ratios comparing intervention effects between subgroups then combining these using random-effects meta-analysis. Steroid interventions will be classified as high or low dose according to whether the dose is greater or less than or equal to 400 mg hydrocortisone per day or equivalent. We will use network meta-analysis methods to make comparisons between the effects of high and low dose steroid interventions (because one trial randomized participants to both low and high dose steroid arms). PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020197242 FULL PROTOCOL: The full protocol for this prospective meta-analysis is attached as an additional file, accessible from the Trials website (Additional file 1). To expedite dissemination of this material, the familiar formatting has been eliminated; this Letter serves as a summary of the key elements of the full protocol for the systematic review.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.070 | 0.115 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.025 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.050 | 0.009 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".