Dual Bronchodilator Therapy as First-Line Treatment in Maintenance-Naïve Patients with Symptomatic COPD: A Pre-Specified Analysis of the EMAX Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Limited prospective evidence is available to guide selection of first-line maintenance therapy in patients with COPD. This pre-specified analysis of the EMAX trial explored the efficacy and safety of dual- versus mono-bronchodilator therapy in maintenance-naïve and maintenance-treated patients. Methods: The 24-week EMAX trial evaluated lung function, symptoms (including rescue medication use), exacerbations, and safety with umeclidinium/vilanterol, umeclidinium, and salmeterol in symptomatic patients at low exacerbation risk who were not receiving inhaled corticosteroids. Maintenance-naïve and maintenance-treated subgroups were defined by maintenance bronchodilator use 30 days before screening. Results: at Week 24 (primary endpoint) were greater with umeclidinium/vilanterol versus umeclidinium (mean difference [95% CI]; maintenance-naïve: 44 mL [1, 87]; maintenance-treated: 77 mL [50, 104]), and salmeterol (maintenance-naïve: 128 mL [85, 171]; maintenance-treated: 145 mL [118, 172]), and in rescue medication inhalations/day over 24 weeks versus umeclidinium (maintenance-naïve: -0.44 [-0.73, -0.16]; maintenance-treated: -0.28 [-0.45, -0.12]) and salmeterol (maintenance-naïve: -0.37 [-0.66, -0.09]; maintenance-treated: -0.25 [-0.41, -0.08]). In maintenance-naïve patients, umeclidinium/vilanterol numerically improved scores at Week 24 for Transition Dyspnea Index versus umeclidinium (0.37 [-0.21, 0.96]) and versus salmeterol (0.47 [-0.10, 1.05]) and Evaluating Respiratory Symptoms-COPD versus umeclidinium (-0.26 [-1.04, 0.53]) and versus salmeterol (-0.58 [-1.36, 0.20]), with similar improvements seen in maintenance-treated patients. All treatments were well tolerated across both subgroups. Conclusion: Similar to maintenance-treated patients, maintenance-naïve patients receiving umeclidinium/vilanterol showed greater improvements in lung function and symptoms compared with patients receiving umeclidinium or salmeterol. These findings provide support for the consideration of dual bronchodilator treatment in symptomatic maintenance-naïve patients with COPD.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| 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".