| Ref ID | 432 |
| First Author | S. Golder |
| Journal | BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY |
| Year Of Publishing | 2006 |
| URL | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1402311/ |
| Keywords |
• Harms • Sponsorship bias • Risk of bias • Low reporting quality |
| Problem(s) |
• Reliance on randomised controlled trials for harms / safety data • Search strategy not provided • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing • Financial conflicts of interest of review authors • No quality assessment undertaken or reported |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | United Kingdom |
| Aim | To assess the methodological process used in systematic reviews of adverse effects published in the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews between 1994 and 2005. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | 48% of included reviews provided information on the source of funding. Very few (5%) provided sufficient information to reproduce the literature search. Of the reviews that did report financial support 85 were independent sources, 32 could represent a conflict of interest (largely a drug manufacturer), and 6 said they received no financial support. 63% of reviews sought to include studies that compared the intervention with a control, and 28% of reviews limited themselves to data from randomised controlled trials. Less than half (41%) of the reviews specified assessment of the quality of the included studies in the methods section, or alluded to it by describing in the methods data extraction that included indicators of study quality. |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 256 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 3635 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |