Preventing Exacerbations in Preschoolers With Recurrent Wheeze: A Meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
CONTEXT: Half of children experience wheezing by age 6 years, and optimal strategies for preventing severe exacerbations are not well defined. OBJECTIVE: Synthesize the evidence of the effects of daily inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), intermittent ICS, and montelukast in preventing severe exacerbations among preschool children with recurrent wheeze. DATA SOURCES: Medline (1946, 2/25/15), Embase (1947, 2/25/15), CENTRAL. STUDY SELECTION: Studies were included based on design (randomized controlled trials), population (children ≤6 years with asthma or recurrent wheeze), intervention and comparison (daily ICS vs placebo, intermittent ICS vs placebo, daily ICS vs intermittent ICS, ICS vs montelukast), and outcome (exacerbations necessitating systemic steroids). DATA EXTRACTION: Completed by 2 independent reviewers. RESULTS: Twenty-two studies (N = 4550) were included. Fifteen studies (N = 3278) compared daily ICS with placebo and showed reduced exacerbations with daily medium-dose ICS (risk ratio [RR] 0.70; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.61-0.79; NNT = 9). Subgroup analysis of children with persistent asthma showed reduced exacerbations with daily ICS compared with placebo (8 studies, N = 2505; RR 0.56; 95% CI, 0.46-0.70; NNT = 11) and daily ICS compared with montelukast (1 study, N = 202; RR 0.59; 95% CI, 0.38-0.92). Subgroup analysis of children with intermittent asthma or viral-triggered wheezing showed reduced exacerbations with preemptive high-dose intermittent ICS compared with placebo (5 studies, N = 422; RR 0.65; 95% CI, 0.51-0.81; NNT = 6). LIMITATIONS: More studies are needed that directly compare these strategies. CONCLUSIONS: There is strong evidence to support daily ICS for preventing exacerbations in preschool children with recurrent wheeze, specifically in children with persistent asthma. For preschool children with intermittent asthma or viral-triggered wheezing, there is strong evidence to support intermittent ICS for preventing exacerbations.
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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 | 0.011 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.020 | 0.043 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".