A simple tweak in steroid timing halves early deaths in Indian children with leukemia

In India's first multicentre randomized childhood-cancer trial, doctors at six major centres treated over 3,000 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood blood cancer. Children who received steroids in short bursts instead of one continuous course saw early treatment deaths fall from 3.5% to 1.3%, while remission rates stayed near 98% — meaning the safer schedule costs nothing in cure rates.