Adjustable Maintenance Dosing with Budesonide/Formoterol Reduces Asthma Exacerbations Compared with Traditional Fixed Dosing: A Five‐Month Multicentre Canadian Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Adjustable maintenance dosing with budesonide/formoterol in a single inhaler (Symbicort, AstraZeneca, Lund, Sweden) may provide a convenient means of maintaining asthma control with the minimum effective medication level. OBJECTIVES: To compare adjustable and fixed maintenance dosing regimens of budesonide/formoterol in asthma. METHODS: This was an open-label, randomized, parallel-group, multicentre, Canadian study of asthma patients (aged 12 years or older, postbronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s 70% or greater of predicted normal). Following a one-month run-in on budesonide/formoterol (100/6 µg or 200/6 µg metered doses, two inhalations twice daily), 995 patients were randomly assigned either to continue on this fixed dosing regimen or to receive budesonide/formoterol adjustable dosing (step down to one inhalation twice daily if symptoms were controlled or temporarily step up to four inhalations twice daily for seven or 14 days if asthma worsened). The primary efficacy variable was the occurrence of exacerbations (requiring oral or inhaled corticosteroids, emergency department treatment, serious adverse events or added maintenance therapy because of asthma). RESULTS: With adjustable dosing, significantly fewer patients experienced exacerbations compared with fixed dosing (4.0% versus 8.9%, P=0.002; number needed to treat=21 [95% CI 13 to 59]). Patients required 36% fewer overall doses of budesonide/formoterol (2.5 versus 3.9 inhalations/day, P<0.001), and total costs per patient were lower (difference over five months -141 Canadian dollars [95% CI -162 Canadian dollars to -116 Canadian dollars]). Asthma symptom severity (modified National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute stage) was maintained or improved in 97% or greater of patients in both groups (pre-run-in to end of treatment). Both treatments were well tolerated. CONCLUSIONS: Budesonide/formoterol adjustable maintenance dosing provided more effective asthma control than fixed dosing, with a lower overall drug dose and reduced total cost.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".