Objective In the pediatric population, acute bronchitis (AB) is a leading cause of illness absence from childcare, school, or apprenticeship. We report a meta-analysis of double-blind, randomized trials with children and adolescents with AB (aged 1–18 years), who were treated with Pelargonium extract EPs 7630 or placebo for 7 days.

Methods The average number of days absent from childcare, school, or apprenticeship due to illness and the proportion of patients still unable to return to their normal activities at treatment end were assessed.

Results Literature search identified two eligible trials with a total of 420 patients. Illness absence was reported for all but two patients under placebo at baseline and for 46.7% (EPs 7630) and 85.0% (placebo) of patients at day 7. Meta-analysis risk ratio for absence at day 7 was 0.55 (95% confidence interval: 0.47, 0.64) for all patients, 0.59 (0.46, 0.76) for children younger than 6 years, and 0.53 (0.44, 0.64) for participants aged 6 to 18 years, all favoring EPs 7630. Compared with placebo, average time until return to normal activities was reduced by EPs 7630 by 1.51 (1.16, 1.86) days for all subjects, by 1.50 (0.92, 20.7) days for those younger than 6 years, and by 1.54 (1.11, 1.97) days for those 6 to 18 years of age (p < 0.001 favoring EPs 7630 for all treatment group comparisons shown).

Conclusion For children and adolescents with AB, meta-analysis shows that EPs 7630 treatment for 7 days significantly reduces the average time of illness absence and significantly increases the proportion of patients able to return to normal activities within 1 week.

All clinical trials included in this meta-analysis were reported to adhere to the principles of Good Clinical practice and the Declaration of Helsinki. The trial protocols and other trial documents required were approved by the respective independent ethics committee and competent authorities. All participants of the single trials gave their informed consent or informed consent was provided by their legal representative, respectively.

Not applicable.

Due to ethical reasons and in terms of data protection law, raw data cannot be shared. To the extent permitted by law, trial data required for validation purposes are already disclosed in results reports on corresponding databases. All relevant data are within the article. Reasonable requests to access the datasets should be directed to the corresponding author.

K.Z. and W.L. were involved in drafting the manuscript, made substantial contributions to the interpretation of data, revised the work critically for important intellectual content, and approved the version to be published. P.F. was involved in the conceptualization of the study design and medical writing, made substantial contributions to the interpretation of data, revised the work critically for important intellectual content, and approved the version to be published. A.Z. was involved in the conceptualization of the study design and the analysis of data, made substantial contributions to the interpretation of data, revised the work critically for important intellectual content, and approved the version to be published. W.K. was involved in drafting the manuscript, made substantial contributions to the interpretation of data, revised the work critically for important intellectual content, and approved the version to be published.

Received: 12 June 2023

Accepted: 17 October 2023

Article published online:
12 January 2024

© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany