ObjectivesTo evaluate the improvement of symptoms in patients with moderate to severe asthma aged 5-18 years treated with GINA (Global Initiative for Asthma) guidelines by network meta-analysis. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about asthma patients aged 5 to 18 years with reported asthma symptom scores were collected from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, SinoMed and clinical trial registry platform (ClinicalTrials.gov). The search time limit was from the inception to August 26, 2023. After two researchers independently screened literature, extracted data and evaluated the risk of bias of included studies, Stata 15.0 software was used for network meta-analysis. ResultsA total of 23 studies were included, 23 of which reported daytime asthma symptom scores. Compared with symptom scores in the low-dose ICS group, there was a statistically significant difference in improvement of daytime symptoms between low-dose ICS+LABA+LTRA (SMD=?1.4, 95%CI ?1.99 to ?0.81) and low-dose ICS+LABA+SABA (SMD=?1.43, 95%CI ?2.48 to ?0.39). Symptom scores for nighttime asthma were reported in 20 RCTs, and there was a statistically significant difference in symptom scores for low-dose ICS+LABA+LTRA (SMD=?1.20, 95%CI ?2.20 to ?0.21) compared with the low-dose ICS group. After the ranking of efficacy, the number one asthma symptom score in both daytime and nighttime was low-dose ICS+LABA+LTRA group. ConclusionLow dose ICS+LABA+LTRA has the best efficacy in improving daytime and nighttime asthma symptom scores.
