ReviewEuropean journal of orthopaedic surgery & traumatology : orthopedie traumatologie2025
Spin and reporting bias in the use of platelet-rich plasma for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis.
Review in European journal of orthopaedic surgery & traumatology : orthopedie traumatologie, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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.
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.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionSystematic reviews and meta-analyses evaluating platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections are vulnerable to spin (i.e., misrepresentation of study findings). We sought to describe the incidence of spin in the abstracts of systematic reviews and meta-analyses reporting on PRP for knee osteoarthritis.
methodsA Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses search was conducted in Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane databases to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses on PRP injections for knee osteoarthritis. Data collected from abstracts included 21 types of spin as originally reported by Yavchitz et al., year and journal of publication, level of evidence, and Scopus CiteScore™. Associations between the most common and severe spin types and abstract characteristics were assessed using Spearman analyses.
resultsIn all 79 abstracts of systematic reviews and meta-analyses assessed, at least one form of spin was identified. The average spin score per abstract was 5.46 ± 2.30 (range 1-12). The most common type of spin was "conclusion claiming the beneficial effect of the experimental treatment despite high risk of bias in primary studies" (67/79, 84.8%). There was a correlation between the spin type "authors hide or do not present any conflict of interest" and an older publication year (rho: - 0.252, P value: 0.025). DISCUSSION: Spin favoring PRP is highly prevalent in the abstracts of systematic reviews and meta-analyses that assess the use of PRP for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. This inaccurate presentation of information identifies a need for (1) high-quality RCTs and (2) reduction of spin in future literature to accurately distribute information regarding PRP for this indication.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.