Doxofylline and Theophylline: A Comparative Clinical Study

Abstract

Objectives: COPD is one of the major public health problems worldwide. Theophylline has been used in the treatment of COPD for decades. Doxofylline a new theophylline congener has been claimed to have better safety profile. The study was undertaken to compare theophylline and doxophylline at doses recommended and commonly used in clinical practice. Methods:The study was conducted in patients of COPD in TB chest department of a medical college hospital. It was randomized, prospective and open label. A total of 154 patients were divided in two group .Group I was administered 400 mg theophylline SR once daily and group II was administered doxofylline 400 mg twice a day orally. Spirometric variables symptom score, and adverse effects were recorded on day 0, 7 and 21 of therapy. Data were compared and analysed using SPSS version 16. Results:Results of the study showed that there was no statistically significant difference with respect to spirometric variables and symptom score in the two groups and there was no significant difference in two groups with respect to side effects (p>0.05). Conclusions:It is concluded that doxophylline has no advantage over theophylline in terms of either efficacy or safety on the doses commonly used in current clinical practice.

A retrospective study on drug utilization in patients with acute exacerbation of bronchial asthma in adults at tertiary teaching hospital in Bidar

“…However faiz et al, concluded that there is no significant difference in spirometric variables between doxophylline and theophylline. 14 Corticosteroids constituted the most commonly used medication and intravenous was the preferred route, and was prescribed in 60% of the prescriptions, in contrast to study done by Sayadeda et al, corticosteroid was given by IV route in 100% cases of severe exacerbation and some cases of severe Exacerbation were also given MgSO4 (28.57%) for additional bronchodilatation. 12 Montelukast, a leukotriene receptor antagonist (55%) was seen in most of the prescription as add-on therapy.…”

Efficacy and safety profile of xanthines in COPD: a network meta-analysis

“…All the meta-analysed clinical trials were published as full-text papers [23-27, 29, 30, 41-47]. Four studies had a Jadad score ⩾3 [23,24,42,45,47], and 10 studies had a Jadad score ⩾1 and <3 [25-27, 29, 30, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47]. The length of treatment ranged from 1 day to 12 weeks.…”

Impact of doxofylline in COPD: a pair-wise meta-analysis

“…Results obtained from 820 COPD patients were selected from 20 studies [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] published between 1988 and 2016. The relevant studies and patients characteristics are described in Table S2.…”

“…All studies were full-text papers but two that were congress abstracts [35,37]. Five studies had a Jadad score ≥3 [18,19,23,34,40], thirteen studies had a Jadad score ≥1 and < 3 [20][21][22]24,25,[29][30][31][32][33]36,38,39], whereas for two studies it was not possible to calculate Jadad score [35,37]. The period of treatment ranged from one day to 52 weeks.…”

“…The GRADE analysis indicated high quality of evidence (++++) for the impact of doxofylline on FEV 1 expressed as volume (ml), and moderate quality of evidence (+++) for the safety profile of doxofylline administered in COPD patients ( Table 2). The GRADE analysis has been carried out in high quality RCTs (Jadad score ≥3), excluded for FEV 1 expressed as % of predicted because only one high quality study [40] reported this variable.…”