Table 2.

GRADE Evidence Profile: Common Cold (Acetylcysteine and Carbocysteine for Acute Upper and Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Children)¹⁴

Quality Assessment							No. of Patients		Effect		Quality	Importance
No. of Studies	Design	Risk of Bias	Inconsistency	Indirectness	Imprecision	Publication Bias	AC or CC	Placebo	Relative (95% CI)	Absolute
Cough after 6-7 d
3 studies N = 139	RCT	Seriousa	No serious risk	Seriousb	Seriousc	Undetected	74	65	0.37 (95% CI, 0.12-1.20)	10% (–19% to –1%)	Very Low

Question: Is there evidence of clinically relevant treatment effects for acetylcysteine and carbocysteine in reducing the duration of cough?

Settings: Many studies included only hospitalized patients.

AC = acetylcysteine; CC = carbocysteine; GRADE = Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation; RCT = randomized controlled trial.

^aStudies have an overall high risk of bias.

^bMany patients were hospitalized, which is not routine in common cold, and included subjects with bronchitis and acute lower respiratory tract infections.

^cStudies were very small and even when combined contributed only 139 total subjects.