Intravenous magnesium sulfate as an adjunct in the treatment of acute asthma.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Magnesium Sulfate and Albuterol, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

In this randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study, patients with acute asthma were treated with inhaled beta-agonists at regular intervals and intravenous (IV) steroids.

Patients were monitored for up to 4 h with regular measurements of pulmonary function.

How the Study Was Run

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

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Magnesium Sulfate group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Magnesium Sulfate.

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

Patients who were discharged from the emergency department were contacted at 1 day and 7 days for follow-up.

Emergency departments of a university-affiliated, voluntary hospital and municipal hospital.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acute Disease, Albuterol, Asthma, Combined Modality Therapy, Forced Expiratory Volume and Magnesium Sulfate.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Magnesium Sulfate and Albuterol.

Results are reported in around 9 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1995 (Chest), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.