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 otitis media in children. Furthermore, we questioned whether anti-allergy treatment may prevent the occurrence of otitis media 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. Based on our review was not possible differentiate between atopy or sensitization and allergy. We included only English-language peer-reviewed papers.