Tezepelumab in severe asthma
PICO
| Population | Adults randomised in trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov for Asthma. |
| Intervention | Tezepelumab (AACT-verified intervention name in each trial). |
| Comparator | Active comparator or placebo as registered on AACT. |
| Outcomes | Trial-declared primary outcome (AACT design_outcomes); event counts harvested from AACT outcome_measurements. |
| Design | Interventional RCTs (post-2010 start date), Phase 2/3 or Phase 3/4. |
Eligibility (6-gate audit)
- GATE-A — NCT exists in AACT 2026-04-12 snapshot.
- GATE-B — Drug pattern "tezepelumab" present in AACT
interventionsfor the NCT. - GATE-C — Condition pattern "asthma" present in AACT
conditions. - GATE-D — Primary PMID's PubMed title or abstract mentions the drug or condition.
- GATE-E — AACT
baseline_countsreports ≥2 per-arm participant rows. - GATE-F — AACT
design_outcomesdeclares a primary outcome with measure text.
Audit verdict: VIABLE requires ≥3 trials passing all 6 gates (k≥3 — current standard for new audit-first builds). Older builds use k≥2.
Pre-specified primary outcomes (per trial)
- Annual Asthma Exacerbation Rate in Adult and Adolescent Patients With Uncontrolled Asthma
- Categorized Percent Reduction From Baseline in the Daily OCS Dose While Not Losing Asthma Control
- Proportions of HCPs and Subjects/Caregivers Who Successfully Administered Tezepelumab in Clinic or at Home by Device Type
Statistical methods
Inverse-variance random-effects pooling on the log-OR scale (Woolf estimator from AACT event counts), REML τ² with Hartung-Knapp-Sidik-Jonkman (HKSJ) variance correction and tk-1 critical value (Cochrane Handbook v6.5 conventions). Single-trial entries report Wald 95% CI on the log scale.
Search strategy
Source-of-truth: AACT 2026-04-12 snapshot from the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI). Auto-discovery query:
SELECT nct_id FROM interventions WHERE lower(name) LIKE '%tezepelumab%' INTERSECT SELECT nct_id FROM conditions WHERE lower(name) LIKE '%asthma%'
PubMed bridge: NCBI E-utilities + idconv API to fetch primary publication PMID and abstract for each NCT.
https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi?db=pubmed&term=tezepelumab+AND+asthma+AND+RCT
Cross-checking: every NCT that survives intersection is verified to have a primary outcome declared in AACT design_outcomes AND a publication whose abstract mentions the drug or condition (GATE-D).
PRISMA-style screening
| Records identified (AACT × PubMed) | 4 |
| Records excluded (gate failure) | 1 |
| Records included (all 6 gates pass) | 3 |
Exclusions by first failing gate
| Gate | n |
|---|---|
| C_condition_in_aact | 1 |
Screening is fully deterministic: every record is auto-flagged by the gate that first fails. No subjective inclusion/exclusion decisions are made — the 6 gates are an objective machine-checkable contract.
Study to Evaluate Tezepelumab in Adults & Adolescents With Severe Uncontrolled Asthma
Primary outcome (AACT): Annual Asthma Exacerbation Rate in Adult and Adolescent Patients With Uncontrolled Asthma
| Events | No event | Total N | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intervention | 4 | 524 | 528 |
| Control | 18 | 513 | 531 |
Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of Tezepelumab in Reducing Oral Corticosteroid Use in Adults With Oral Corticosteroid Dependent Asthma
Primary outcome (AACT): Categorized Percent Reduction From Baseline in the Daily OCS Dose While Not Losing Asthma Control
| Events | No event | Total N | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intervention | 71 | 3 | 74 |
| Control | 43 | 33 | 76 |
Published MD: -13.04 [-17.83, -8.18] (V2 RCT extractor on PubMed abstract)
"difference -13.04; 95% CI -17.83 to -8.18"
Tezepelumab Home Use Study
Primary outcome (AACT): Proportions of HCPs and Subjects/Caregivers Who Successfully Administered Tezepelumab in Clinic or at Home by Device Type
| Events | No event | Total N | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intervention | 110 | 1 | 111 |
| Control | 103 | 2 | 105 |
Forest plot — per-trial OR + pooled estimate
Pooled estimate (REML-DL + HKSJ, Cochrane v6.5)
Leave-one-out
0. Published vs Pooled cross-check
1 of 3 trials had an extractable published effect estimate in their PubMed abstract (V2 RCT extractor; HR/OR/RR/MD). The pooled estimate is from AACT event counts (Woolf log-OR) and is therefore a different estimand from the trial-published HR — agreement at the rank/direction level is the integrity check.
| Trial | Type | Published effect (95% CI) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOURCE | MD | -13.04 [-17.83, -8.18] | PMID 36702146 |
Pooled (from AACT event counts): OR 2.012 [0.0, 1257217667.225]
1. Heterogeneity
| τ² (DerSimonian-Laird) | 6.9169 |
| Q-statistic | 27.634 (df=2) |
| I² | 92.8% — considerable (>75%) |
| Method | REML-DL-HKSJ |
2. Prediction interval (Cochrane v6.5)
95% PI: 0.005 – 834.316
tk-1 = 1.96 · √(τ² + SE²) = 3.075 (Cochrane Handbook v6.5, §10.10.4.3).
3. Egger's funnel asymmetry test
| Slope (bias) | -1.161 |
| Test verdict | p≥0.05 (no asymmetry) |
| Power note | recommended k≥10; current k=3 is exploratory. |
4. Leave-one-out sensitivity
3 omit-one re-runs (see Analysis section above).
5. PRISMA 2020 status
| Identification | AACT × PubMed intersection (deterministic) |
| Screening | 6-gate audit (machine-checkable) |
| Eligibility | k=3 trials passed all 6 gates |
| Included | k=3 with extractable event counts |
6. Risk of Bias (audit-first scope)
Audit-first builds do not apply RoB 2.0 domain coding — that requires full-text trial reading. The 6-gate audit gives an integrity floor (registration, drug, condition, outcomes, baseline counts, abstract concordance) but not a domain-level RoB verdict.
For RoB 2.0 coding, see the matching curated *_REVIEW.html for this topic if one exists in the flagship portfolio.
7. GRADE certainty (auto-derived)
Certainty: Low
Auto-derivation considers k and I² only; full GRADE requires RoB, indirectness, publication bias judgment, and effect-magnitude scoring (not applied in audit-first builds). Triggers: k=3 (imprecision); I²=92.8% (substantial heterogeneity).
8. Reproducibility fingerprint
sha256[:16] = 8fbd50590c3fc244
Bit-stable hash of {sorted NCT list, pooled OR + 95% CI}. Reproduce by re-running scripts/add_topic_autodiscover.py + generate_topic_html.py against the same AACT snapshot.
Audit-first build
This review was generated by the 6-gate audit-first pipeline after the 16-round portfolio cleanup. Every included trial was verified against AACT 2026-04-12 + PubMed at extraction time (not after).
- Full per-trial gate log:
outputs/new_topics/TEZEPELUMAB_ASTHMA_REVIEW.json - Methodology: FINAL_INTEGRITY_REPORT_V2.md
- Main index: RapidMeta portfolio
- AACT attribution: Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI), snapshot 2026-04-12.
- PubMed attribution: NCBI E-utilities + idconv API.
Limits of this build
- Pool estimand is an OR derived from AACT event counts; the trial-published HR (where applicable) is not parsed from the PubMed abstract in the audit-first pipeline. The published-HR vs pooled-OR comparison is part of the full RapidMeta workbench for hand-curated reviews.
- Risk-of-bias (RoB-2) is not coded here — see the parent NMA review or the curated
*_REVIEW.htmlfor the same topic if one exists. - The 6 gates are necessary but not sufficient for a Cochrane-grade review — they are an integrity floor, not a ceiling.