Intravenous magnesium sulphate in the management of moderate to severe acute asthmatic children nonresponding to conventional therapy.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Calcium Channel Blockers.

Management of severe acute asthma attacks in children sometimes bring difficulties to the physician.

Some current treatment strategies have focused on intravenous magnesium sulphate administration in patients nonresponding to therapy with beta-2 agonists and corticosteroids.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 20 children were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were children and teenagers.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Calcium Channel Blockers and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Calcium Channel Blockers study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Calcium Channel Blockers group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Acute Disease, Asthma, Calcium Channel Blockers, Magnesium Sulfate and Treatment Failure.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Calcium Channel Blockers in 20 children.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The publication is from 1999 (European journal of emergency medicine : official journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.