AB039. Pragmatic trial stepping down Flutiform® in patients maintained on high dose ICS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guidelines recommend a gradual step-down of asthma therapy if asthma has been well-controlled for at least 3 months. In real life, however, many well-controlled patients are prescribed high doses of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), and are therefore unnecessarily at risk of systemic side effects associated with long-term ICS use. To encourage and facilitate step-down in a clinical setting, further pragmatic studies are required to demonstrate that good control of asthma can be maintained with a lower dose of ICS in stable and controlled patients, and to explore potential predictors for response to step-down.To test if good control of asthma can be maintained in adult patients previously stable on Flutiform® 250 (250 mcg fluticasone/10 mcg formoterol) for 12 weeks, after step-down to Flutiform® 125 (250 mcg fluticasone/5 mcg formoterol). Methods: This was the second phase of a pragmatic, open-label, randomised controlled, non-inferiority trial in adult patients with asthma. Patients eligible for this phase had been on Flutiform® 250 for 12 weeks, had had no exacerbations during this period and were considered suitable for step-down by their GP. A total of 116 patients from 23 sites in the UK were randomised 1:1 to continue on Flutiform® 250 or to step down to Flutiform® 125. The primary outcome was asthma control assessed using the 7-item Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ7). Non-inferiority limit on the ACQ7 was set at 0.3. Patients were eligible for the non-inferiority analysis if they stayed on the randomised treatment for at least 8 weeks and did not change treatment before outcome visit. Secondary outcomes included forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1) % predicted, the Mini-Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (Mini-AQLQ), asthma control (according to GINA) and absence of exacerbations during outcome period. Analyses of secondary outcomes included all randomised patients [Full Analysis Set (FAS)]. Adherence was calculated based on dose counter values for patients who returned the study inhalers. Results: Of the 107 patients who completed the study 48 (45%) were male and the mean [standard deviation (SD)] age was 54 (13) years. Of those randomised, 52 (90%) patients in each arm were eligible for the non-inferiority analysis (see figure for details of the FAS). At week 12, Flutiform® 125 was non-inferior to Flutiform® 250 in terms of asthma control assessed by ACQ7, with an upper confidence limit of 0.22, which is less than the pre-defined limit of 0.3 [mean difference 0.01; 95% confidence interval (CI), −0.20 to 0.22]. No significant differences between the groups were found for GINA asthma control, absence of exacerbations, Mini-AQLQ, or FEV1% predicted (see Table for treatment effect estimates). Adherence was high in both groups [median (inter-quartile range) 94% (88% to 106%) and 98% (77% to 103%) for the Flutiform® 125 and Flutiform® 250 groups, respectively] and there was no significant difference in distribution of adherence between the groups (P=0.20, Mann-Whitney U-test). Conclusions: This study showed that real-life patients previously controlled on Flutiform® 250 can be stepped down to Flutiform® 125 and maintain good asthma control. Additional analyses are ongoing to investigate biomarkers [blood eosinophils, fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO)] and other factors that might predispose patients to exacerbations or worsening of asthma control following ICS step-down. In the future, such predictors could help physicians to make more informed decisions on stepping down therapy in a real-life setting.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.016 | 0.002 |
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".