Pre-hospital use of inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists and incidence of ARDS: A population-based study

Inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists were shown to decrease the lung injury in animal models. We investigated the association of pre-hospital use of inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists with the incidence of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) in a population based cohort of hospitalized patients. Retrospective cohort study of adult patients from Olmsted County, Minnesota admitted to the hospital with at least one predisposing condition for ARDS from 2001-2008. The association with pre-hospital use of inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled beta agonists was evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses. Primary outcome was ARDS and secondary outcome was hospital mortality. Out of 2429 hospitalized adult patients with at least one risk factor for ARDS, 10.5% of those taking and 14% of those not taking inhaled corticosteroids developed ARDS (OR 0.72; 0.53-0.97; p