The Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio Determines Clinical Efficacy of Corticosteroid Therapy in Patients with COVID-19

Corticosteroid therapy is now recommended as a treatment in patients with severe COVID-19. But one key question is how to objectively identify severely ill patients who may benefit from such therapy. Here, we assigned 12,862 COVID-19 cases from 21 hospitals in Hubei Province equally to a training and a validation cohort. We found that a neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) > 6.11 at admission discriminated a higher risk for mortality. Importantly, however, corticosteroid treatment in such individuals was associated with a lower risk of 60-day all-cause mortality. Conversely, in individuals with an NLR <= 6.11 or with type 2 diabetes, corticosteroid treatment was not associated with reduced mortality, but rather increased risks of hyperglycemia and infections. These results show that in the studied cohort corticosteroid treatment is associated with beneficial outcomes in a subset of COVID-19 patients who are non-diabetic and with severe symptoms as defined by NLR.

Automated summary

The study suggests that corticosteroid therapy is beneficial for non-diabetic COVID-19 patients with severe symptoms, identified by a neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) > 6.11 at admission. However, it also indicates that corticosteroid treatment may increase risks of hyperglycemia and infections for patients with an NLR <= 6.11 or with type 2 diabetes.