| Ref ID | 914 |
| First Author | R. Whear |
| Journal | JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY |
| Year Of Publishing | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895435622001780?via%3Dihub |
| Keywords |
• Overlapping reviews/redundancy • COVID • Low methodological quality • Low reporting quality • Non-Cochrane reviews |
| Problem(s) |
• Reasons for excluding potentially eligible studies not provided • Conflicts of interest or funding of included studies not assessed • Low reporting (PRISMA) quality • Low methodological (AMSTAR) quality • No registered or published protocol • Redundant / overlapping / duplicated review question; leads to research waste |
| Article Type | Empirical |
| Article Subtype | Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review |
| First Author Country | United Kingdom |
| Aim | To suggest possible approaches to combatting the impact of the COVID-19 infodemic to prevent research waste in future health emergencies and in everyday research and practice. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | From 51 included systematic reviews of the effectiveness of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 indexed in the Epistemonikos database in June 2021. There was considerable duplication of effort; multiple reviews were conducted at the same time with inconsistencies in the evidence included. The reviews were of low methodological quality, poorly reported, and did not adhere to preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidance. The AMSTAR-2 items that were least reported were: no available protocol (69%), authors not providing a list of excluded studies and justify the exclusions (80%), and authors not reporting on the sources of funding for the studies included in the review (88%). |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 51 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 102 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |