Abstract
Topical corticosteroids are the foundation of pharmacologic treatment for eosinophilic oesophagitis (EoE) and administered mainly as nebulized swallowed fluticasone or budesonide viscous solution (BVS). Recently, a budesonide orodispersible tablet (BOT) has been approved for the treatment of EoE. The ideal formulation of topical corticosteroid delivery is unclear. Therefore, we aimed to compare the efficacy of BOT with other topical corticosteroid formulations for achieving histological remission in adult patients with EoE in a network meta-analysis (NMA).
Methods
A systematic literature review was performed using Medline and EMBASE from 1990 to July 2019. Eligible studies evaluated adult patients with a diagnosis of EoE treated with a topical corticosteroid in a randomized controlled trial. The outcome of interest was the proportion of patients achieving induction of histological remission (peak esophageal eosinophil count <5 eosinophils/high-power field). Direct comparisons were performed using the Mantel–Haenszel method and an NMA was performed using a fixed effect Bayesian framework with Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulations. Heterogeneity between studies was analyzed using the Cochrane Q test and consistency was verified.
Results
The search yielded 321 references and 6 (447 patients) were included in the quantitative summary. In the NMA, all formulations of topical corticosteroids were associated with greater histological remission rates than placebo. BOT was associated with a significantly higher rate of histological remission compared to BVS (odds ratio [OR] = 4.9; 95% credible interval [CrI] = 1.4,19.1), fluticasone (OR = 7.4; 95%CrI = 1.7,34.5), nebulized swallowed budesonide (NSB) (OR = 25.0; 95%CrI = 2.9,247.2) and placebo (OR = 387.6; 95%CrI = 97.5,2275.6). Similar trends were shown in direct comparisons. Analysis of the ranking of treatment options based on probability of effectiveness found BOT to be most probable followed by BVS, fluticasone, NSB, and placebo, consecutively.
Conclusion
This NMA of randomized controlled trials suggests that BOT is significantly more likely to achieve histological remission in adult patients with EoE compared to BVS, fluticasone, and NSB. We hypothesize that the superiority of BOT is related to increased contact time and targeting all inflammatory sites in the oesophagus, in contrast to other formulations. This NMA suggest that BOT is the first choice therapy amongst topical corticosteroids for the management of EoE.
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