Macrolide antibiotics for treatment of asthma in adults: A meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled clinical studies

Publication date: Available online 22 September 2014 Source:Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics Author(s): Xiang Tong , Tingting Guo , Sitong Liu , Shifeng Peng , Zhipeng Yan , Xin Yang , Yonggang Zhang , Hong Fan Mounting studies have been showed that long-term macrolides used in patients with asthma could improve the lung function and symptoms. However, a large number of studies have reported inconclusive results. The aim of this meta-analysis was to investigate the effect of macrolide antibiotics in patients with asthma. We have performed a search in PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), and Wanfang databases. The weighed mean difference (WMD) or standardized mean difference (SMD) was used to evaluate the pooled effect. Statistical analysis was performed by STATA 11.0 software. Totally 1306 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The overall results indicated that statistically significance of long-term macrolides therapy in patients with asthma on forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) (WMD: 0.11, P < 0.01), peak expiratory flow (PEF) (SMD: 0.25, P = 0.001), airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) (SMD: 0.90, P = 0.04), forced vital capacity (FVC) (WMD: 0.18, P = 0.05) and FEV1/FVC (WMD: 1.93, P < 0.001), but no statistically significance on FEV1/predict, FVC/predict, symptom scores, quality of life scores (QOL), reliever inhaler puffs per 24 h, and cell counts in sputum and blood. The subgroup analysis in...
Source: Pulmonary Pharmacology and Therapeutics - Category: Respiratory Medicine Source Type: research