Meta-analyses of typical study demographics showed that there was significant overlap in 95% confidence intervals and study data distributions for the three exacerbation severity levels except for age where study patients in Level II had a mean age of 64.2 years (95% confidence interval (CI): 62.9 to 65.5 years) compared to 68.0 years (95% CI: 65.9 to 70.1 years) for patients in Level III (p = 0.002) ( Table 2 ). When the demographics were re-analyzed according to patient settings, we determined that only body mass index was statistically different between the out-patient setting (mean point estimate: 26.2 kg/m 2 ; 95% CI: 23.8 to 28.7 kg/m 2 ) and the in-patient setting (mean point estimate: 23.4 kg/m 2 ; 95% CI: 22.5 to 24.3 kg/m 2 ) (p = 0.038) ( Table 3) .