Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31918734›Full record

ArticleJournal of translational medicine2020

Can prospective systematic reviews of animal studies improve clinical translation?

Pandora Pound, Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga

Abstract readLetter
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of translational medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
31citing papers in PubMed, 9 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

31 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Guideline
  3. Efficacy of melatonin in term neonatal models of perinatal hypoxia-ischaemia.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2022
    Pooled it
  4. Role of Exosomes in Dermal Wound Healing: A Systematic Review.The Journal of investigative dermatology · 2022
    Pooled it
  5. Reporting in rodent models of 'chemobrain': a systematic review assessing compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2021
    Pooled it
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  17. Article
  18. Disease Animal Models for Cancer Research.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2023
    Article
  19. Article
  20. Knowledge gaps in diabetes research: an evidence mapping of the literature.Journal of diabetes and metabolic disorders · 2022
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Pandora PoundSafer Medicines Trust, PO Box 122, Kingsbridge, TQ7 9AX, UK. pandora@safermedicines.org.ORCID 0000-0001-6885-6401
Merel Ritskes-HoitingaSYRCLE, Department for Health Evidence, Radboud University Medical Center, PO Box 9101, Route 133, 6500 HB, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Systematic reviews are powerful tools with the potential to generate high quality evidence. Their application to animal studies has been instrumental in exposing the poor quality of these studies, as well as a catalyst for improvements in study design, conduct and reporting. It has been suggested that prospective systematic reviews of animal studies (i.e. systematic reviews conducted prior to clinical trials) would allow scrutiny of the preclinical evidence, providing valuable information on safety and efficacy, and helping to determine whether clinical trials should proceed. However, while prospective systematic reviews allow valuable scrutiny of the preclinical animal data, they are not necessarily able to reliably predict the safety and efficacy of an intervention when trialled in humans. Consequently, they may not reliably safeguard humans participating in clinical trials and might potentially result in lost opportunities for beneficial clinical treatments. Furthermore, animal and human studies are often conducted concurrently, which not only makes prospective systematic reviews of animal studies impossible, but suggests that animal studies do not inform human studies in the manner presumed. We suggest that this points to a confused attitude regarding animal studies, whereby tradition demands that they precede human studies but practice indicates that their findings are often ignored. We argue that it is time to assess the relative contributions of animal and human research in order to better understand how clinical knowledge is actually produced.

Indexed as

Research DesignSystematic Reviews as TopicTranslational Research, BiomedicalAnimalsHumansProspective StudiesAnimal researchPreclinicalSystematic reviewTranslation

Identifiers

PMID31918734
PMCPMC6953128

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.