Methodological concerns about a systematic review and meta-analysis of maternal active smoking during pregnancy and low birth weight.

Ref ID 665
First Author B.K. Zheng
Journal NICOTINE & TOBACCO RESEARCH
Year Of Publishing 2019
URL https://academic.oup.com/ntr/article-abstract/21/6/850/4821020
Keywords • Low reporting quality
• Error
• Public health
Problem(s) • Intervention not described / defined
• Errors in effect estimate calculations or data synthesis
• Poor execution of narrative synthesis
Article Type Editorial
Article Subtype Comment/letter
First Author Country China
Aim Aims to draw attention to methodological limitations of a published systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effects of smoking in pregnancy to infant birth weight.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings Comment expressing concerns on the conduct of one systematic review including lack of specific definitions of active smoking in different included studies, poor execution of narrative synthesis regarding the number of cigarettes smoked and alleged errors in the quantitive synthesis (pooling of unadjusted, rather than adjusted odds ratios).
Number of systematic reviews included 1
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted No
Interpretation impacted description