Antibiotics for exacerbations of asthma.

CONCLUSIONS: We found limited evidence that antibiotics given at the time of an asthma exacerbation may improve symptoms and PEFR at follow-up compared with standard care or placebo. However, findings were inconsistent across the six heterogeneous studies included, two of the studies were conducted over 30 years ago and most of the participants included in this review were recruited from emergency departments, limiting the applicability of findings to this population. Therefore we have limited confidence in the results. We found insufficient evidence about several patient-important outcomes (e.g. hospital admission) to form conclusions. We were unable to rule out a difference between groups in terms of all adverse events, but serious adverse events were rare. PMID: 29938789 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research