Corticosteroids for Eosinophilic Esophagitis in Children: A Meta-analysis

Treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is focused on dietary, pharmacologic, and endoscopic therapy options. Within the pharmacologic alternatives, topical corticosteroids are the most used, and a large number of studies evaluating their effectiveness have been published, requiring a new summary of evidence.

To evaluate the histologic and clinical effectiveness of the use of corticosteroids in pediatric patients with a diagnosis of EoE.

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Medline, Embase, Science Citation Index Expanded, Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature, and ClinicalTrials.gov (June 2019).

We selected randomized controlled trials assessing corticosteroids versus a placebo or dietary treatment of EoE in children.

Methodologic quality of evidence was evaluated by using the Cochrane Collaboration's risk of bias tool and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation system. The primary outcomes were clinical and histologic improvement.

A total of 1655 studies were identified. Five studies were included (206 patients). Histologic response was 49.25% in the corticosteroids group and 4.16% in the placebo group (risk ratio 11.05 [confidence interval 3.8-32.15]; P < .0001). Symptomatic response was 33.6% in the corticosteroids group and 21.8% in the control group (risk ratio 1.62 [confidence interval 0.94-2.79]; P = .08). There were no major adverse effects.

Heterogeneity of the diagnosis of EoE.

Our review revealed favorable results of corticosteroids versus placebo, mainly in histologic response. More studies are needed, by using validated clinical scores, to obtain more reliable results.