We aimed to investigate the factors that make inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients more or less likely to be willing to take corticosteroids.
Respondents completed a questionnaire. The primary outcome was whether the respondents would or would not use corticosteroids again to treat their IBD. Three separate univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to examine which variables predicted willingness to take steroids, including specific side effects.
Four hundred fifty three respondents (321 with Crohn's disease, 115 with ulcerative colitis; mean age 40 years, 297 [66%] female) completed the questionnaire. Corticosteroid efficacy (OR 6.83, 95% CI 3.67-12.7), lack of previous negative side effects (OR 0.11, 95% CI 0.04-0.32), and positive side effects (OR 2.96, 95% CI 1.63-5.40) were associated with a willingness to use corticosteroids in the future. In multivariate analysis, weight gain (OR 0.53, 95% CI 0.29-0.98) and hallucinations (OR 0.28, CI 0.09-0.89) were associated with an unwillingness to use corticosteroids again, whereas increased energy (OR 2.30, 95% CI 1.20-4.42) was the only significant positive side effect in a multivariate model.
Past experiences with corticosteroids influence whether patients will take corticosteroids again. Clinicians should enquire about side effects and positive psychological symptoms associated with corticosteroid use.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 July 2019.
All research outputs
#11,985,432
of 33,779,198 outputs
Outputs from Digestive Diseases
#378
of 1,030 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#140,398
of 352,738 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Digestive Diseases
#3
of 9 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
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