Study selection.
In the first screening authors read the title and abstract of articles
selecting those being as inclusive as possible. The abstracts were
screened independently by reviewers of the two groups. Any disagreements
were resolved by consensus. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were
established before the selection of relevant studies. The inclusion
criteria were primary research (including descriptive studies,
observational studies, randomized trials, and basic science articles),
published after January 2000, addressing allergy and rhinosinusitis in
children including common cold. Furthermore, we questioned if
anti-allergy treatment may prevent the occurrence of rhinosinusitis or
improve its specific management.
We excluded secondary research studies (e.g., review articles or
systematic review), case studies, newspaper article, lecture, letter,
comment, personal narrative, consensus conference, editorial. Only
articles with full text available were included. Additional studies were
manually identified from the reference lists of retrieved literature. We
excluded all the article that did not meet the inclusion criteria or
deal directly with the issue investigated. We made exceptions for
experimental models including studies on cultured epithelial cells
obtained from adults, which are obviously more frequent than from
children. Based on our review was not possible differentiate between
atopy or sanitization and allergy. We included only English-language
peer-reviewed papers.