How effective are treatments other than antibiotics for acute sore throat?

CRD COMMENTARY:

Some aspects of the review question were not stated clearly. In addition, there was insufficient information on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the review process itself, to fully assess its quality. It was unclear until the results section that both trials aimed at the prevention of sore throat and those aimed at symptomatic relief were included. A clear statement of what the intervention was compared with, and a definition of the chosen outcome, patient-centred sore throat symptoms, would have been helpful.
The search strategy used appropriate sources of randomised clinical trials and was not limited to English language articles, although there was a bias towards published studies. The included studies were presented in clear tables, although there were some discrepancies in the numerical data presented within the tables, and between the tables and the text. There appears to have been no assessment of the quality of the included trials, other than noting whether they were single- or double-blind. It is, therefore, possible that treatment effects were exaggerated in those trials of poorer quality.
The authors' attempt to score each symptom on the same scale across trials was not presented in sufficient detail for the reader to judge how appropriate this was. A narrative synthesis was appropriate considering the variety of interventions and outcome time-points across the included studies. The majority of the data presented pertained to NSAIDS, so the authors' conclusion that all interventions tested in the included studies were effective may not be balanced; in particular, there were few data on interventions such as steroids and caffeine. In addition, a more cautious interpretation may be required where the treatments were tested in addition to antibiotics.