Formoterol as reliever medication in asthma: a post-hoc analysis of the subgroup of the RELIEF study in East Asia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: As-needed formoterol can effectively relieve asthma symptoms. Since budesonide/formoterol is available as maintenance and reliever therapy in Asia, formoterol is now being used as-needed, but always with concomitant inhaled corticosteroids. The objective of this analysis was to assess the safety and efficacy of formoterol therapy in patients in East Asia (China, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Singapore) with asthma. METHODS: Post-hoc analyses of data from the East Asian population of the RELIEF (REal LIfe EFfectiveness of Oxis® Turbuhaler® as-needed in asthmatic patients; study identification code: SD-037-0699) study were performed. RESULTS: This sub-group comprised 2834 randomised patients (formoterol n = 1418; salbutamol n = 1416) with mean age 35 years; 50.7% were male. 2678 patients completed the study. There was no significant difference in the total number of adverse events (AEs) reported in the formoterol and salbutamol groups (21.3% vs 20.9% of patients; p = 0.813), nor in the total number of serious AEs and/or discontinuations due to AEs (4.6% vs 5.5%, respectively; p = 0.323). Compared with salbutamol, formoterol was associated with a significantly longer time to first exacerbation (hazard ratio 0.86; p = 0.023) and a 14% reduction in the risk of any exacerbation (p < 0.05). Relative to salbutamol, mean adjusted reliever medication use throughout the study was significantly lower in the formoterol group (p = 0.017) and the risk of increased asthma medication use was 20% lower with formoterol (p = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with asthma in East Asia, as-needed formoterol and salbutamol had similar safety profiles but, compared with salbutamol, formoterol reduced the risk of exacerbations, increased the time to first exacerbation and reduced the need for reliever medication.
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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 | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".