Magnesium bolus or infusion fails to improve expiratory flow in acute asthma exacerbations.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Magnesium and Aminophylline in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

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

Forty-eight asthmatic patients aged 18 to 60 years with initial peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) < 200 L/min who failed to double their initial PEFR after two standardized albuterol treatments.

All subjects received standardized aminophylline and steroid therapy.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Because people in this Magnesium 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 Magnesium, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some participants received a placebo instead of Magnesium, giving a reference point.

Changes from baseline were compared by one-way analysis of variance for repeated measures.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acute Disease, Aminophylline, Asthma, Forced Expiratory Volume, Magnesium, Methylprednisolone and Peak Expiratory Flow Rate.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 3 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1993 (Chest), a journal based in United States.

More context: the related Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc library page, all human trials.