Ocular symptom efficacy and intranasal corticosteroids

摘要

In their July 2009 letter, Bielory et al suggest that intranasal triamcinolone is efficacious for the ocular symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR) and that this is perhaps a class effect of all intranasal corticosteroids (INSs). However, 4 of the 5 studies cited as support lacked placebo controls. Without a placebo arm, positive ocular results are uninterpretable because the ocular symptoms could have disappeared as the seasons waned.2 The use of an "active comparator" in 3 of these 4 studies fails to compensate for the lack of a placebo arm because the active comparators have not been proved to be effective for ocular symptoms of SAR.