Objectives To evaluate the methodological bias and the reliability of the conclusions of systematic reviews (SRs) on urate-lowering therapy (ULT) for chronic gout. Methods PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, CBM, WanFang Data and CNKI databases were electronically searched to collect published systematic reviews and meta-analyses evaluating urate-lowering drugs in chronic gout from inception to April 8th 2017. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, assessed the methodological quality of included SRs using the AMSTAR tool, and assessed the quality of the body of evidence for each outcome using the GRADE approach. Results A total of 11 relevant SRs/Mets were included, containing 3 main outcome measures. All these SRs contained allopurinol. Ten SRs contained febuxostat, 3 SRs contained benzbromarone and 1 SR contained probenecid. Ten SRs assessed the risk of bias of included original studies. Eight SRs used the" assessing risk of bias”tool recommended by Cochrane Collaboration for this assessment while 2 used other tools. The assessment results of AMSTAR tool showed: the scores of 4 SRs were ≥9, and the others were ≤8. GRADE results showed: the quality of the evidence of 20 outcomes was low or very low, 10 outcomes was moderate and two outcomes was high. Conclusions Moderate quality evidence shows that febuxostat is beneficial in achieving target serum uric acid levels when comparing to allopurinol, and high quality evidence shows the incidence of gout flares is not significantly different between the two groups. High quality evidence also shows that the safety of febuxostat is better than allopurinol. Evidence of SRs is still insufficient to support the effectiveness and safety of other urate-lowering drugs. It is expected that more scientific and rigorous researches will be performed in the future, for which more high quality evidence will be produced to fill relevant gaps.
Guideline Development Tool (GRADE pro GDT) is an online tool that addresses the integration of the important data and process of the clinical practice guidelines and diagnostic guidelines. GRADE pro GDT has been updated several times, including the whole style of the web page, details of the information recording, management of the conflict of interests, and the presentation and dissemination of the results. The new version of the tool is much more intellectualized and transparent, which makes the guideline development and rating quality of evidence more standardized and scientific. This paper introduces new aspects of this tool with examples.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the research issues related to evidence quality grading methods for public health decision making. MethodsPubMed, Web of Science, CNKI, WanFang Data, CBM and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect studies related to the application of evidence quality grading methods for public health decision making from inception to December 2022. The questions were constructed according to the SPIDER model. The quality of the included literature was evaluated by using the CASP checklist, and a three-level interpretation analysis of the questions on the application of quality rating methods for public health decision making was conducted using the thematic synthesis method to establish a pool of question entries. ResultsA total of 14 papers were included, covering seven countries. GRADE was the commonly used method for grading the quality of evidence. CASP evaluation results showed eight high quality studies, four medium quality studies and two low quality studies. The thematic synthesis method summarized 13 question entries in 7 categories. ConclusionThe existing methodology for grading the quality of evidence for public health decision making suffers from the diversity of evidence sources and the underestimation of the level of evidence from complex intervention studies.
The focus of health equity is to enable the public to have fair access to health services and achieve satisfactory health outcomes. With research developments, guideline developers increasingly pay more attention to the fairness in the practice guidelines and have carried out exploration and practice in the relevant guidelines. The GRADE working group has begun to investigate how to use GRADE to assess health equity in practice guidelines since 2014. In 2017, the series of methodological guidelines of health equity in guideline development was officially published. It proposed 5 approaches to evaluate health equity and pointed out current methodological challenges of applying GRADE to assess health equity. This paper aims to introduce the GRADE equity guidelines, so as to provide a reference for Chinese researchers in their practice.
The biggest advantages of network meta-analysis (NMA) are to compare the effectiveness of different interventions about one conditions using a quantitative way, pool the results of direct comparison and indirect comparison, and rank the effectiveness based on outcomes, so as to select the best decision for patients. In the paper we introduce the methods of applying GRADE system to NMAs based on the papers published by GRADE working group and other relative studies. The steps of using GRADE to NMAs are mainly based on four aspects: firstly, presenting direct and indirect effect estimates and 95% CI; secondly, rating of quality of direct and indirect estimates; thirdly, presenting the results of NMAs; and the last step is to rating the quality of NMA effect estimates. The methods of rating the quality of direct comparison are the same to use GRADE in traditional meta-analysis. The rating of the quality of the indirect estimates is based on the ratings of the two pairwise estimates that contributes to the indirect estimate of the comparison of interest. The lower confidence rating of the two direct comparisons constitutes the confidence rating of the indirect comparison. When both direct and indirect evidence are available, we suggest using the higher of the two quality ratings as the quality rating for NMA estimate. The four steps of rating the quality of NMA from GRADE working group have promoted the theoretical system of NMA. But the process requires the evaluators to be familiar with GRADE system, and conduct pilot test to make sure the evaluators had understood the items of GRADE system correctly. In addition, we also need to concern that the non-transitivity among different groups and the inconsistency between direct comparison and indirect comparison.
The summary of finding (SoF) table for network meta-analysis (NMA) was developed by the GRADE working group to facilitate and consolidate understanding NMA findings and GRADE certainty of evidence. This paper introduces the development process, the structure of NMA-SoF and limitations. A NMA publication was presented as an example to comprehensively illustrate the application of the NMA-SoF table.
High-quality randomized controlled trials are the best source of evidence to explain the relationship between health interventions and outcomes. However, in cases where they are insufficient, indirect, or inappropriate, researchers may need to include non-randomized studies of interventions to strengthen the evidence body and improve the certainty (quality) of evidence. The latest research from the GRADE working group provides a way for researchers to integrate randomized and non-randomized evidence. The present paper introduced the relevant methods to provide guidance for systematic reviewers, health technology assessors, and guideline developers.
Objective To explore the methodological characteristics of Chinese clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus based on usage of GRADE. MethodsCNKI, PubMed, WanFang Data databases, and Medlive.cn were electronically searched to collect Chinese clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus over the past 11 years from January 1st 2010 to December 31st 2020. Four reviewers independently extracted data according to the content of appraisal of guidelines quality evaluation tool AGREE Ⅱ. The clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus were divided into two groups based on whether GRADE was used or not. The changes and development of methodological quality in the past 11 years were explored between the two groups. ResultsIn recent years, the number of clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus which used the GRADE in China had increased annually. The practice guidelines/expert consensus which did not use GRADE had lower methodology quality (P<0.01). ConclusionsThe use of GRADE in clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus requires improvement, and mastering GRADE methodology can effectively improve the methodological quality of the clinical practice guidelines/expert consensus.
ObjectivesTo evaluate the methodological bias and the reliability of the conclusions of systematic reviews (SRs) of lanthanum carbonate in the treatment of chronic kidney disease with hyperphosphatemia. MethodsWe electronically searched databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, PROSPERO, CNKI, CBM, WanFang Data and VIP to collect systematic reviews and meta-analysis about lanthanum carbonate in the treatment of chronic kidney disease with hyperphosphatemia from inception to August 31st, 2016. Two reviewers independently screened literature and extracted data, then AMSTAR tool was used to assess the methodological quality of included studies and the GRADE tool was used to grade the evidence quality of outcome measures included in the SRs. ResultsA total of eight relevant SRs were included and containing three main outcome measures. The assessment results of AMSTAR tool suggested that:four SRs were of high quality, and the other four were of medium quality. GRADE results showed:for serum phosphorus level, compared with placebo, the quality of the evidence of three SRs were medium, low and very low; compared with calcium carbonate or conventional phosphorus binder, four SRs were low, low, low and very low; compared with sevelamer, one SR was low. For serum calcium level, compared with placebo, the quality of the evidence of three SRs were high, medium and low, respectively; compared with calcium carbonate or conventional phosphorus binder, five SRs were low, low, low, very low and very low; compared with sevelamer, one SR was very low. For serum iPTH level, compared with placebo, the quality of the evidence of three SRs were medium, low and very low; compared with calcium carbonate or conventional phosphorus binder, five SRs were medium, low, low, very low and very low; compared with sevelamer, one SR was low. ConclusionAt present, methodological quality assessment for the treatment of hyperphosphatemia in chronic kidney disease with lanthanum carbonate is generally not high and the level of evidence for the conclusion is generally low. In drug safety, especially in the occurrence of adverse events of the digestive system is still controversial, and a large amount of high quality experimental is needed to demonstrate the safety of its long-term use. Clinicians need to be cautious in using these evidence to make clinical decisions.
Objective To assess the effectiveness of sternocleidomastoid muscle (SCM) flap in preventing gustatory sweating syndrome following parotidectomy. Methods Databases including The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMbase, CBM, CNKI, VIP and WanFang Data were searched from inception to March 2012 to retrieve randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about SCM flap in preventing gustatory sweating syndrome following parotidectomy. The data of studies meeting the inclusion criteria were extracted by two reviewers independently, the methodological quality was assessed and cross-checked, and meta-analysis was performed using the RevMan 5.1 software. Results A total of 10 RCTs involving 825 patients were included. The results of meta-analyses showed that compared with the blank control group, SCM flap could obviously decrease the subjective incidence of gustatory sweating syndrome by 78% (OR=0.22, 95%CI 0.08 to 0.59, P=0.003) and the objective incidence by 83% (OR=0.17, 95%CI 0.05 to 0.60, P=0.006). The sensitivity analysis indicated the above results were robust. The evidence based on GRADE system was of “low quality”. There was no obvious publication bias according to the tunnel chart. Conclusions Current evidence shows that SCM flap can obviously decrease both subjective and objective incidence of gustatory sweating syndrome following parotidectomy. Considering the limitation of the included studies, this conclusion still needs to be tested by more large-scale and high-quality RCTs taking SCM function as one of the outcome.