The effect of the endothelin-1 receptor antagonist, bosentan, on patients with poorly controlled asthma: a 17-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover pilot study.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Bronchodilator Agents.

To determine the effect of bosentan on subjects with poorly controlled asthma.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Bronchodilator Agents study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Bronchodilator Agents, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Bronchodilator Agents could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Bronchodilator Agents and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

This was a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover pilot study.

The asthma control test, asthma symptom scores, rescue albuterol use, and FEV1 were measured at baseline and during the last week of bosentan and placebo.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Asthma, Bosentan, Bronchodilator Agents, Endothelin A Receptor Antagonists, Endothelin Receptor Antagonists, Forced Expiratory Volume and Pilot Projects.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Bronchodilator Agents.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (The Journal of asthma : official journal of the Association for the Care of Asthma), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.