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Q In children and adults with asthma, do long acting β agonists (LABAs) increase severe asthma exacerbations requiring hospital admission, life threatening asthma attacks, and asthma related deaths?
Clinical impact ratings GP/FP/Primary care ★★★★★★☆ Internal medicine ★★★★★★☆ Allergy & immunology ★★★★★★☆ Emergency medicine ★★★★★☆☆ Respirology ★★★★★☆☆
METHODS
Data sources:
Medline, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, CINAHL, and Cochrane databases (all from 1966 to December 2005); references of selected reviews; and the US Food and Drug Administration website.
Study selection and assessment:
randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in any language that compared LABAs (salmeterol, formoterol, or eformoterol) with placebo and had ⩾3 month follow up. Patients were allowed to use short acting β agonists if needed. 19 RCTs (n = 33 826; mean age 37–38 y, 51% men) met the selection criteria. Quality assessment of individual studies was based on randomisation procedure, allocation concealment, blinding, dropouts and …
Footnotes
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For correspondence: Dr S R Salpeter, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, CA, USA. Salpeter{at}stanford.edu
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Source of funding: no external funding.
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