Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the April 2010 issue of the EQUATOR Newsletter.
This newsletter highlights several new reporting guidelines, including the updated guidance for reporting randomised trials – CONSORT 2010, and informs about other important initiatives and events.
Our Newsletter is posted on the EQUATOR website and you are most welcome to share it with your colleagues.
We hope you find it useful!
In this month's Newsletter
New reporting guidelines added to our Library
The EQUATOR Network's Library for Health Research Reporting was updated on 12 April. The new guidelines were added for reporting experimental studies (randomised trials), meta-analysis of individual participant data, qualitative research, conflict of interest, and a manual for editors developed by the Eastern Mediterranean Association of Medical Editors.
New categories of guidelines were added: "Reporting data" and "Reporting guidelines in other research fields".
With every update of our online resources we also update our ‘Catalogue of Reporting Guidelines for Health Research’ by producing the updated summary tables. The article and updated list can be downloaded here.
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
CONSORT 2010 Statement published
New guidance to improve the reporting of trial findings was published simultaneously on 24 March 2010 by nine leading journals around the world - BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, BMC Medicine, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, The Lancet, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Open Medicine, PLoS Medicine, and Trials.
Full and transparent reporting of trials is crucial to ensure that decisions about health care are based on the best available evidence.
The guidance, known as the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Statement, was first published in 1996 and revised in 2001. It includes a checklist to help authors write reports of randomized controlled trials so that others can judge the reliability and validity of the results.More than 400 journals and three leading editorial groups across the world have now given their official support to CONSORT.
The latest version, CONSORT 2010 (1), improves the specificity and clarity of the previous checklist. Several new items will also make it easier for decision makers to judge the soundness of trial results. A separate explanatory paper (2), also published today in the BMJ and the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology provides published examples of transparent reporting and elaborates on the empirical evidence that forms the basis for the guidance.
References:
1. Schulz KF, Altman DG, Moher D, for the CONSORT Group. CONSORT 2010
Statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised
trials. BMJ 2010;340: c332-c332 [Full text]
2.
Moher D, Hopewell S, Schulz KF, Montori V, Gotzsche PC, Devereaux PJ,
Elbourne D, Egger M, Altman DG. CONSORT 2010 Explanation and
Elaboration: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised
trials. BMJ 2010;340: c869-c869 [Full text]
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
Guidance for developers of health research reporting guidelines
Open access journal PLoS Medicine has published a paper written by the EQUATOR team “Guidance for developers of health research reporting guidelines”.The paper draws on the extensive experience in the development of reporting guidelines and offers very practical guidance to the scientists considering the development of new needed guidelines or extending and updating existing guidance.
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
Update on the SPIRIT development
The SPIRIT initiative (Standard Protocol Items for Randomized Trials) is working towards producing evidence-based recommendations for key information to include in a trial protocol. An updated project summary is now available on the EQUATOR website.Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
COMET initiative
The COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) initiative has been launched recently at the Liverpool Medical Institution.COMET is an international initiative bringing together individuals and organisations interested in the development, application and promotion of an agreed standardised minimum set of outcomes, known as a "core outcome set", that should be measured and reported in all clinical trials of effectiveness in a specific condition.
Read more about COMET in their Newsletter or in the BMJ blog.
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
Upcoming events - dates for your diary
"Crystal clear reporting: importance of using PRISMA for systematic reviews."
Free online webinar by the Cochrane Canada Live
Date: 21 April 2010, 12 noon EDT, 1 hour in duration
Listen in as David Moher, EQUATOR Network Executive Group, speaks on the importance of reporting guidelines to improve the quality and transparency of health research and specifically of the PRISMA statement for systematic reviews.
More informatin on how to join in here.
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"Good clinical trial reporting in dermatology: who cares?"
The BEES / EQUATOR 2010 Summer School (outline)
Date & venue: 21 June 2010, Nottingham, UK
Target audience: Clinical researchers in dermatology
Website: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/dermatology
Contact: Margaret.Whittingham@nottingham.ac.uk
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
Help us promote good research reporting practice
Promotional materials (leaflets and posters introducing EQUATOR and its online resources) together with a comprehensive list of all available resources are now available on our website.
Please feel free to print them and display in your organisations, departments, libraries, and events. We appreciate if you let us know and we highlight your effort on our website.
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website
Articles of interest
A number of commentaries introducing new CONSORT 2010 have been published; we would like to highlight the article by Prof Hywel Williams:
Williams HC. Cars, CONSORT 2010, and Clinical Practice. Trials 2010, 11:33
Another interesting editorial was published by the editors of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. It discusses the problems of papers resubmitted for publication that have already been peer reviewed but ignore the provided comments. Using examples from their own journal, the editors alert to the questionable practices of some authors and discuss these in much broader context of the general peer review issues.
Ioannidis JP, Tatsioni A, Karassa FB: Who is afraid of reviewers' comments? Or, why anything can be published and anything can be cited. Eur J Clin Invest 2010, 40:285-287.
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Editorial by Sorensen and Rothman discusses the quality of prognosis research and makes the case for registration of observational studies.
Sorensen HT, Rothman KJ. The prognosis for research. BMJ 2010;340:c703. PMID:20164129
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The article by David Grimes and colleagues highlights problems of using surrogate end points that lack validation and asks journals to consider warning their readers about the hidden dangers.
Grimes DA, Schulz KF, Raymond EG. Surrogate end points in women's health research: science, protoscience, and pseudoscience. Fertil Steril 2010 Apr;93(6):1731-4. PMID:20153470
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A research study carried out by Kirkham and colleagues examined the prevalence of outcome reporting bias and its impact on Cochrane reviews. The outcome reporting bias, which happens when only a subset of the originally recorded outcome variables is selected for publication on the basis of obtained results, is an under-recognised problem that affects the conclusions in a substantial proportion of Cochrane reviews.
The article alerts systematic reviewers to this problem and offers a nine point classification system for missing outcome data in randomised trials (ORBIT).
Kirkham JJ, Dwan KM, Altman DG, Gamble C, Dodd S, Smyth R, et al. The impact of outcome reporting bias in randomised controlled trials on a cohort of systematic reviews. BMJ 2010;340:c365. PMID:20156912
Read more on the EQUATOR Network website