Iftikhar and Colleagues Reply: Methodology Clarified

Excerpt

We thank Gunsoy and colleagues for their comments on our paper [1] and appreciate the opportunity to further clarify our methods and results. The definitions of asthma exacerbations differed in different studies and was provided in each article mostly in their ‘methods’ sections. Yes, it is true, that we ‘did not extract treatment effects’ directly from the source articles. We simply used the asthma exacerbation data reported in each study (see Table for further clarification) in our meta-analysis. We never reported that some biologics increased asthma exacerbations as Gunsoy et al. imply. It is true that ‘patient-years’ were not provided in each study, which is why we specified in the methods section, that we calculated the patient-years based on the data on follow-up provided in each study. However, it is not true, that exacerbation rates were not reported ‘within most studies’ (see Table). For Chupp et al. [2], Bel et al. [3], and Castro et al. [4] studies, the asthma exacerbation ‘counts’/rates/percentages (definitions and reporting formats of which varied) were reported in the respective papers (see Table). …