ArticleSystematic reviews2018
Time-to-update of systematic reviews relative to the availability of new evidence.
Article in Systematic reviews, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- How much can we save by applying artificial intelligence in evidence synthesis? Results from a pragmatic review to quantify workload efficiencies and cost savings.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Pooled it
- Measurement and outcomes of co-production in health and social care: a systematic review of empirical studies.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic online living evidence summaries: emerging tools to accelerate evidence synthesis.Clinical science (London, England : 1979) · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic Review: Polysubstance Prevalence Estimates Reported during Pregnancy, US, 2009-2020.Maternal and child health journal · 2023Pooled it
- Automated medical literature screening using artificial intelligence: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022Pooled it
- From review to synthesis: A step-by-step methodological guide to systematic reviews and multilevel meta-analyses.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Benchmarking a Local Schema-Constrained Large Language Model Pipeline for Abstract Screening and Evidence Mapping.Cureus · 2026Article
- Topic-specific living databases of clinical trials: A scoping review of public databases.Clinical trials (London, England) · 2026Article
- Rationale and Design of the Cancer Immunotherapy Evidence Living (CIEL) Library: A Continuously Updated Clinical Trial Database of Cancer Immunotherapies.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Causal Loop Diagrams of Food Systems, Diet, and Obesity: A Scoping Review of Methods, Contextual Factors, and Outcomes.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2025Article
- Lifecycles of Cochrane Systematic Reviews (2003-2024): A Bibliographic Study.Cochrane evidence synthesis and methods · 2025Article
- Validation of The Umbrella Collaboration for Tertiary Evidence Synthesis in Geriatrics: Mixed Methods Study.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Accelerating Disease Model Parameter Extraction: An LLM-Based Ranking Approach to Select Initial Studies For Literature Review Automation.Machine learning and knowledge extraction · 2025Article
- LitAutoScreener: Development and Validation of an Automated Literature Screening Tool in Evidence-Based Medicine Driven by Large Language Models.Health data science · 2025Article
- Publicly available continuously updated topic specific databases of randomised clinical trials: A scoping review.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Patient profiled data for treatment decision-making: valuable as an add-on to hepatitis C clinical guidelines?BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2024Article
- The Automated Systematic Search Deduplicator (ASySD): a rapid, open-source, interoperable tool to remove duplicate citations in biomedical systematic reviews.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Sustainability of knowledge translation interventions: the evidence lacks evidence.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- Risk of drug use during pregnancy: master protocol for living systematic reviews and meta-analyses performed in the metaPreg project.Systematic reviews · 2023Article
- Living systematic reviews in rehabilitation science can improve evidence-based healthcare.Systematic reviews · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundA number of methods for deciding when a systematic review should be updated have been proposed, yet little is known about whether systematic reviews are updated more quickly when new evidence becomes available. Our aim was to examine the timing of systematic review updates relative to the availability of new evidence.
methodsWe performed a retrospective analysis of the update timing of systematic reviews published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2010 relative to the availability of new trial evidence. We compared the update timing of systematic reviews with and without signals defined by the completion or publication of studies that were included in the updates.
resultsWe found 43% (293/682) systematic reviews were updated before June 2017, of which 204 included an updated primary outcome meta-analysis (median update time 35.4 months; IQR 25.5-54.0), 38% (77/204) added new trials, and 4% (8/204) reported a change in conclusion. In the 171 systematic reviews with reconcilable trial reporting information, we did not find a clear difference in update timing (p = 0.05) between the 15 systematic reviews with a publication signal (median 25.3 months; IQR 15.3-43.5) and the 156 systematic reviews without a publication signal (median 34.4 months; IQR 25.1-52.2). In the 145 systematic reviews with reconcilable trial completion information, we did not find a difference in update timing (p = 0.33) between the 15 systematic reviews with a trial completion signal (median 26.0 months; IQR 19.3-49.5) and the 130 systematic reviews without a trial completion signal (median 32.4 months; IQR 24.1 to 46.0).
conclusionA minority of 2010 Cochrane reviews were updated before June 2017 to incorporate evidence from new primary studies, and very few updates led to a change in conclusion. We did not find clear evidence that updates were undertaken faster when new evidence was made available. New approaches for finding early signals that a systematic review conclusion is at risk of change may be useful in allocated resources to the updating of systematic reviews.
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