Prescribing Trends of Oral Corticosteroids Among Young Adults with Active Asthma

Background: Use of oral corticosteroids (OCS) in patients with asthma is known to cause serious adverse effects, why it is important to monitor the usage trends and extend. So far, knowledge of patterns of the actual OCS use among patients with asthma is limited. We aimed to investigate the nationwide trends of OCS use among young adults with asthma in Denmark.Methods: We used the Danish nationwide registers to identify a study population of adults aged 18-45 with active asthma (defined as having >=2 filled asthma-related prescriptions within 12 coherent months), during 2000-2017. Users were temporarily censored if having 2 consecutive years with no fills for any asthma-related medications. We calculated the total amount of dispensed OCS per 1000 individuals per year and the annual period prevalence of OCS-users, categorized by the level of OCS-exposure, i.e. 1) no OCS use, 2) low OCS use (lt;5 mg OCS in prednisolone-equivalent doses/d/y), and 3) high OCS use (>=5 mg OCS/d/y).Results: We identified 223,079 unique individuals with asthma during the study period; 566 years (intequartile range [IQR] 18-36 years). Of these individuals, 61,863 (28 became, at one point, an OCS-user. The mean annual prevalence of (any) OCS use was 4.6 with a slight increase from 2000 (4.4 to 2017 (4.9. The mean annual prevalence of high OCS use was 0.6no trend during study period). High-users of OCS were older than non-users (median 36 years vs. 33 years in 2017), and more likely to be of female sex (593.Conclusion: The prevalence of OCS users among young adults with asthma in Denmark is stable and generally low at around 4.6 with high use of OCS being rare.FootnotesCite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2020; 56: Suppl. 64, 2623.This abstract was presented at the 2020 ERS International Congress, in session textquotedblleftRespiratory viruses in the "pre COVID-19" eratextquotedblright.This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only).