Treatment of Acute Bronchiolitis

In this issue of the Journal, Wainwright et al.1 provide data from a clinical trial in which 194 infants hospitalized with bronchiolitis were treated with inhaled epinephrine or placebo. In this age of commercial support for clinical trials, funding is available only when commercial sponsors stand to make a profit from the manufacture of a drug. Thus, Wainwright et al. are to be congratulated for having tackled an important question using a multicenter, randomized, blinded clinical trial that does not involve a new drug. The authors' findings overturn the popular notion that treatment of bronchiolitis with inhaled epinephrine, as compared . . .