Wheezing is common among preschool children with an upper respiratory infection even when they do not have a clear predisposition to asthma. In this study, no benefit in the duration of in-hospital treatment was noted among children who received oral prednisolone, as compared with placebo; all children were treated with inhaled albuterol.

Children who did not have a history of allergies but who had recurrent wheezing with colds were given high-dose inhaled fluticasone or placebo by their parents at the first signs of an upper respiratory tract infection. Practitioners prescribed fewer treatments with oral corticosteroids for children treated with inhaled fluticasone than for those given placebo, but those treated with fluticasone had smaller gains in height and weight. This preemptive use of inhaled corticosteroids cannot be recommended.

The antiplatelet drug clopidogrel requires activation by cytochrome P-450 (CYP) enzymes. This study shows that CYP polymorphisms that reduce clopidogrel activation result in reduced antiplatelet effect and less clinical benefit in patients with acute coronary syndromes.

In a cohort of 2208 patients who presented with acute myocardial infarction and were treated with clopidogrel, single-nucleotide polymorphisms in five genes known to influence the response to clopidogrel were analyzed. Patients who carried loss-of-function alleles of the gene encoding CYP2C19, as compared with those who did not, had a significantly higher rate of cardiovascular events during the subsequent year.