Search strategy
This systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) process to identify published experimental and clinical articles about allergy and otitis media in children. Manuscript were screened primarily by Ovid Medline and EMBASE and from other sources (Pubmed Central, Cochrane review, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) and published from January 2000 to September 2020. Literature searches were performed in September 2020.
We performed two different searches using MeSH-terms. One group of authors focused on experimental studies matching the term as follow: [(Eustachian tube disfunction) OR (middle ear cytokine) OR (middle ear inflammation)] AND [(allergy) OR (allergic rhinitis) OR (atopy) OR (atopic) OR (allergic children)] AND [(children) OR (childhood) OR (pediatric)]. The second group of authors focused onclinical studies, matching the term as follow: [(acute otitis media) OR (chronic otitis media) OR (otitis media with effusion) OR (recurrent acute otitis media) OR (middle ear effusion) OR (chronic suppurative otitis media) OR (otitis)] AND [(allergy) OR (allergic rhinitis) OR (atopy) OR (atopic) OR (allergic children) OR (non-allergic children) OR (immunoglobulin E) OR (immunotherapy) OR (antihistamine) AND (children) OR (childhood) OR (pediatric)].