Daily inhaled corticosteroids or montelukast for preschoolers with asthma or recurrent wheezing: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Most international asthma guidelines recommend that children ≤5 years with asthma or recurrent wheezing be treated with daily low- moderate dose inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) as the preferred controller and leukotriene receptor antagonists (LTRA) as alternative therapy. There is no systematic review comparing the efficacy of ICS versus LTRA monotherapy in this age group. OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy of daily ICS versus LTRA in preschoolers with asthma or recurrent wheezing. METHODS: Randomized, prospective, controlled trials published by December 2017, with a minimum of 3-month therapy with daily ICS versus LTRA were identified. The co-primary outcomes were the number of wheezing episodes and daily symptom score. Secondary outcomes included unscheduled emergency visits, need of rescue systemic corticosteroids (SC), hospitalization for exacerbations, lung function, and adverse effects. RESULTS: Of 29 trials identified, six studies (n = 3204 patients, 62% males, age range: 6-54 months) met the inclusion criteria; two were at low risk of bias. Five pertained to children with asthma; one to those with recurrent wheezing. No outcomes were similarly reported in the six studies, preventing meta-analysis. Based on trials at lowest risk of bias and the largest open-labelled studies, ICS was associated with better control of symptoms and less exacerbations than LTRA. And also less need for rescue SC. Insufficient data of high quality prevented firm conclusions on other secondary outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: In preschoolers with asthma or recurrent wheezing, daily ICS appears more effective than daily LTRA for improving symptom control and decreasing exacerbations, particularly those requiring rescue SC, although the magnitude of benefit remains to be quantified.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.011 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| 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".