ArticleSystematic reviews2024
The quality of COVID-19 systematic reviews during the coronavirus 2019 pandemic: an exploratory comparison.
Article in Systematic reviews, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reporting of ethical aspects in validation studies conducted in Peru.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Early enteral nutrition may reduce the incidence of refeeding syndrome for patients with severe corona virus disease 2019 and high nutritional risk.Experimental and therapeutic medicine · 2026Article
- Reporting quality of qualitative health studies published by Peruvian authors: A scoping review.PloS one · 2026Article
- Completeness and changes in data reporting pharmacological interventions to treat COVID-19.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Why is it important to implement meta-research in universities and institutes with medical research activities?Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe unprecedented volume and speed at which COVID-19-related systematic reviews (SRs) may have been produced has raised questions regarding the quality of this evidence. It is feasible that pandemic-related factors may have led to an impairment in quality (reduced internal validity, increased risk of bias [RoB]). This may have serious implications for decision-making related to public health and individual healthcare.
objectiveThe primary objective was to compare the quality of SRs published during the pandemic that were related to COVID-19 with SRs published during the pandemic that were unrelated to COVID-19 (all of which were fully appraised in the KSR Evidence database of SRs in healthcare). Our secondary objective was to compare the quality of SRs published during the pandemic (regardless of research topic), with SRs published pre-pandemic.
methodsWe compared all SRs related to COVID-19 to all SRs unrelated to COVID-19 that (i) were published during the pandemic (between 1st March 2020 and September 14, 2022), (ii) were included in KSR Evidence, and (iii) had been appraised using the ROBIS tool. We then compared all SRs published during the pandemic (regardless of research topic) with a pre-pandemic sample of SRs.
resultsFor SRs published during the pandemic, we found there was no statistically significant difference in quality between those SRs tagged as being related to COVID-19 and those that were not [relative risk (RR) of low RoB for COVID-19 versus COVID-19-unrelated reviews: 0.94; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.66 to 1.34]. Generally, COVID-19 SRs and COVID-19-unrelated SRs were both of low quality with only 10% of COVID-19 reviews and 11% of COVID-19-unrelated reviews rated as low RoB. However, SRs (regardless of topic) published during the pandemic were of lower quality than those published pre-pandemic (RR for low RoB for 'during pandemic' versus 'pre-pandemic': 0.30; 95% CI: 0.26 to 0.34) with 11% of pandemic and 36% of pre-pandemic SRs rated as low RoB.
conclusionThese results suggest COVID-19 and COVID-19-unrelated SRs published during the pandemic are equally of low quality. SRs published during the pandemic were generally lower quality compared with SRs published pre-pandemic irrespective of COVID-19 focus. Moreover, SR quality in general is seriously lacking, and considerable efforts need to be made to substantially improve the quality and rigour of the SR process.
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