Role of statin on mortality outcome in pneumonia patients: A meta-analysis

AIM: To determine the role of statin on mortality outcome in patient with pneumonia.METHODS: For the present meta-analysis, we search the published literatures online through Pub Med, Embase, Scopus and the Cochrane Library databases and the search words used were "statins' ", "bacteraemia", "pneumonia", and "ICU infections". During the online search our focus was on full text articles, peerreviewed, observational cohort or case control studies and randomized controlled trials. Those studies were selected whose outcome was hospital mortality among patients with pneumonia whether or not on statins. In this meta-analysis, 30 d mortality was used as the primary outcome as it has been demonstrated in the previous research that 30 d mortality is primarily because of community acquired pneumonia. As all studies were observational, where statin users were compared with historical rather than randomized controls, odds ratio for in-hospital or all-cause 30 d mortality was used as the primary effect measure used in the meta-analysis.RESULTS: We came across the total 25 studies comprising 35355 patients(2734 statin users and 32621 statin non-users) during the electronic search. Four studies out of 25 were included in the final analysis. In this meta-analysis, when data regarding the use of statin in pneumonia patients on mortality was pooled, its results showed the non-significant effect of the statin on mortality outcome.CONCLUSION: Although statins seems to be useful in the treatment of pneumonia patients but for statistical conclusion, further randomized controlled trials needs to be done or their results still waited to be published of ongoing trials, with the conclusion that presently statins showing no clinical benefit in the pneumonia patients.