382,077 papers found

BACKGROUND: IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is the most prevalent primary glomerulonephritis worldwide and a leading cause of chronic kidney failure. There are currently no definitive therapeutic regimens to treat or prevent the progression of IgAN. However, biologic agents offer novel therapeutic approaches that target immunol…

AIM: To evaluate the available evidence from clinical trials on the efficacy of gout medicines against COVID-19. DESIGN: Systematic review and Meta-analysis. METHODS: We are systematically searching five databases [PubMed, Embase, CT.gov, ICTRP, CINAHL (EBSCO)]. We are following the PRISMA statement and the EPOC guid…

A scale to measure a psychological construct is subject to measurement error. When meta-analyzing correlations obtained from scale scores, many researchers recommend correcting for measurement error. I considered three caveats when correcting for measurement error in meta-analysis of correlations: (a) the distribution…

BACKGROUND: In recent years, the incidence rate of thyroid cancer is increasing. Meanwhile, with the development of medical technology, the detection rate of thyroid cancer by ultrasound has been greatly improved. Normally doctors can initially distinguish pathology of malignant thyroid diseases by their abundant exper…

BACKGROUND: Morning cortisol levels have been reported to be elevated among patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). We perform a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis to assess morning central or peripheral cortisol levels in AD patients as compared with cognitively normal individuals. METHODS: Studies were i…

BACKGROUND: Acupuncture has been widely used clinically to relieve chronic severe constipation. However, the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic severe constipation is uncertain. The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture in the treatment of chronic severe cons…

BACKGROUND: Postoperative delirium (POD) is a form of delirium that is newly diagnosed after a surgical procedure. This study aims to examine the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture treatment for POD in patients who underwent surgery. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials for patients diagnosed with POD using vali…

BACKGROUND: As a common symptom of perimenopausal period, perimenopausal insomnia brings great pain to many women and families. Acupuncture has been accepted by people as the incidence rate of this disease increases. The purpose of this study is to systematically compare the safety and efficacy of various acupuncture t…

BACKGROUND: Network meta-analysis (NMA) provides a powerful tool for the simultaneous evaluation of multiple treatments by combining evidence from different studies, allowing for direct and indirect comparisons between treatments. In recent years, NMA is becoming increasingly popular in the medical literature and under…

BACKGROUND: Vancomycin is effective against Gram-positive bacteria and considered as a last resort in the case of ineffective use of other antigens. While due to the occurrence of adverse reactions, the application of vancomycin is strictly limited. We will conduct a meta-analysis to summarize adverse reactions of vanc…

BACKGROUND: As a novel ultrasound technique, superb microvascular imaging can quickly, simply and noninvasively study the microvascular distribution in the tumor and evaluate the microvascular perfusion. Studies suggested that superb microvascular imaging is helpful for the differentiation between benign and malignant…

BACKGROUND: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has gradually drawn the attention of clinicians as an alternative for Primary Liver Cancer (PLC), is based on the theory of syndrome differentiation. However, owing to the lack of evidence-based medical evidence, the authors designed this protocol to evaluate TCM's effecti…

MicrobiomeAnalyst is an easy-to-use, web-based platform for comprehensive analysis of common data outputs generated from current microbiome studies. It enables researchers and clinicians with little or no bioinformatics training to explore a wide variety of well-established methods for microbiome data processing, stati…

BACKGROUND: Vernal keratoconjunctivitis (VKC) is a common eye disease and can result in permanent decrease or loss of vision. Houttuynia eye drops (HED) is used for the treatment of VKC. However, the clinical evidence of HED has not been well concluded. Herein, we described a proposed systemic review and meta-analysis…

BACKGROUND: The effects of physical activity on executive function are well documented, but whether physical activity contributes to the executive function of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children are still inconclusive. METHODS: The study is guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Re…

For a particular disease, there may be two diagnostic tests developed, where each of the tests is subject to several studies. A quadrivariate generalised linear mixed model (GLMM) has been recently proposed to joint meta-analyse and compare two diagnostic tests. We propose a D-vine copula mixed model for joint meta-ana…

A large number of antidepressant drugs are available across the world. All have been compared against placebo, and many have been compared with some but not all other antidepressants. There is therefore little information about a hierarchy of the efficacy and acceptability of these drugs. About 9 years ago, a network m…

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The purpose of this article is to review the strengths and weaknesses of systematic reviews and meta-analyses to inform our current understanding of cardiac surgery. RECENT FINDINGS: A systematic review and meta-analysis of a focused topic can provide a quantitative estimate for the effect of a trea…

BACKGROUND: When conducting a meta-analysis of a continuous outcome, estimated means and standard deviations from the selected studies are required in order to obtain an overall estimate of the mean effect and its confidence interval. If these quantities are not directly reported in the publications, they must be estim…

Conventional meta-analysis estimators are weighted means of study measures, meant to estimate an overall population measure. For measures such as means, mean differences and risk differences, a weighted arithmetic mean is the conventional estimator. When the measures are ratios, such as odds ratios, logarithms of the s…