Trial reportAnnals of family medicine2016
Recommending Oral Probiotics to Reduce Winter Antibiotic Prescriptions in People With Asthma: A Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial.
Trial report in Annals of family medicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Probiotics for preventing acute otitis media in children.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2019Pooled it
- Efficacy of probiotics as adjuvant therapy in bronchial asthma: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Allergy, asthma, and clinical immunology : official journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2024Review
- Reporting of costs and economic impacts in randomized trials of de-implementation interventions for low-value care: a systematic scoping review.Implementation science : IS · 2023Article
- The Gut Microbiota and Respiratory Diseases: New Evidence.Journal of immunology research · 2020Review
- The crosstalk between microbiome and asthma: Exploring associations and challenges.Clinical and experimental allergy : journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeEvidence from studies mainly in children has shown that orally administered probiotics may prevent respiratory tract infections and associated antibiotic use. We evaluated whether advice to take daily probiotics can reduce antibiotic prescribing for winter respiratory tract infections in people with asthma.
methodsWe conducted a randomized controlled, parallel-group pragmatic study for participants aged 5 years and older with asthma in a UK primary care setting. The intervention was a postal leaflet with advice to take daily probiotics from October 2013 to March 2014, compared with a standard winter advice leaflet. Primary outcome was the proportion of participants prescribed antibiotics for respiratory tract infections.
resultsThere were 1,302 participants randomly assigned to a control group (n = 650) or intervention group (n = 652). There was no significant difference in the primary outcome measure, with 27.7% receiving antibiotics in the intervention group and 26.9% receiving antibiotics in the control group (odds ratio = 1.04; 95% CI, 0.82-1.34). Uptake of probiotics was low, but outcomes were similar in those who accessed probiotics (adjusted odds ratio = 1.08; 95% CI, 0.69-1.69, compared with controls). We also found no evidence of an effect on respiratory tract infections or asthma exacerbations.
conclusionsIn this pragmatic community-based trial in people with asthma, we found no evidence that advising use of winter probiotics reduces antibiotic prescribing.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.