Tai Luu Lam Thang

BACKGROUND: Although protocol registration of systematic reviews/meta-analysis (SR/MA) is still not mandatory, it is highly recommended that authors publish their SR/MA protocols prior to submitting their manuscripts for publication as recommended by the Cochrane guidelines for conducting SR/MAs. our aim was to assess the awareness, obstacles, and opinions of SR/MA authors about the protocol registration process. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey study included the authors who published SR/MAs during the period from 2010 to 2016, and they were contacted for participation in our survey study. They were identified through the literature search of SR/MAs in Scopus database. An online questionnaire was sent to each participant via e-mail after receiving their approval to join the study. We have sent 6650 emails and received 275 responses. RESULTS: A total of 270 authors responses were complete and included in the final analysis. Our results has shown that PROSPERO was the most common database used for protocol registration (71.3%). The registration-to-acceptance time interval in PROSPERO was less than 1 month (99.1%). Almost half of the authors (44.2%) did not register their protocols prior to publishing their SR/MAs and according to their opinion that the other authors lack knowledge of protocol importance and mandance to be registered, was the most commonly reported reason (44.9%). A significant percenatge of respondents (37.4%) believed that people would steal their ideas from protocol databases, while only 5.3% reported that their SR/MA had been stolen. However, the majority (72.9%) of participants have agreed that protocol registries play a role in preventing unnecessary duplication of reviews. Finally, 37.4% of participants agree that SR/MA protocol registration should be mandatory. CONCLUSION: About half of the participants believes that the main reason for not registering protocols, is that the other authors lack knowledge concerning obligation and importance to register the SR/MA protocols in advance. Therefore, tools should be available to mandate protocol registration of any SRs beforehand and increasing awareness about the benefits of protocol registration among researchers.

We systematically searched and meta-analyzed the epidemiological characteristics, frequency of clinical signs, and outcomes of dengue-associated hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. Ten electronic databases were searched systematically plus manual search of reference lists to identify relevant articles published until May 2017. The highest number of reported cases were from South-East Asia region (62 cases), followed by Western Pacific region (20 cases), and America (31 cases). The term "dengue hemorrhagic fever" predominated in studies that used the World Health Organization 1997 definition (59.7%), whereas "severe dengue" predominated in studies using the World Health Organization 2009 definition (76.8%). Among 122 cases, fever, splenomegaly, hepatomegaly, anemia, thrombocytopenia, and serum ferritin ≥500 μg/L were likely to report by articles representing by large sample size. The pooled proportion of these findings were as follows: fever 97.2%, hepatomegaly 70.2%, splenomegaly 78.4%, thrombocytopenia 90.1%, anemia 76.0%, and serum ferritin ≥500 μg/L 97.1%. This study highlighted a high case fatality rate (14.6%) and co-infection among dengue hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis patients. We suggest that long fever duration, persistent thrombocytopenia, elevated serum ferritin, and lactate dehydrogenase levels could be good diagnostic indicators for dengue-associated hemophagocytic syndrome. Bone marrow aspiration could be used as one criterion for diagnosis but is not obligatory. Further research is needed to examine the possible risk difference for development of hemophagocytic syndrome and to explore potential relationships between specific dengue classifications and dengue-associated hemophagocytic syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Meta-analyses are on top of the evidence-based medicine pyramid, yet many of them are not completed after they are begun. Many factors impacting the publication of meta-analysis works have been discussed, and their association with publication likelihood has been investigated. These factors include the type of systematic review, journal metrics, h-index of the corresponding author, country of the corresponding author, funding sources, and duration of publication. In our current review, we aim to investigate these various factors and their impact on the likelihood of publication. A comprehensive review of 397 registered protocols retrieved from five databases was performed to investigate the different factors that might affect the likelihood of publication. These factors include the type of systematic review, journal metrics, h-index of the corresponding author, country of the corresponding author, funding sources, and duration of publication. RESULTS: We found that corresponding authors in developed countries and English-speaking countries had higher likelihoods of publication: 206/320 (p = 0.018) and 158/236 (p = 0.006), respectively. Factors affecting publications are the countries of corresponding author (p = 0.033), whether they are from developed countries (OR: 1.9, 95% CI: 1.2-3.1, p = 0.016), from English-speaking countries (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.2-2.7, p = 0.005), update status of the protocol (OR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.0-2.6, p = 0.033), and external funding (OR: 1.7, 95% CI: 1.1-2.7, p = 0.025). Multivariable regression retains three variables as significant predictors for the publication of a systematic review: whether it is the corresponding author from developed countries (p = 0.013), update status of the protocol (p = 0.014), and external funding (p = 0.047). CONCLUSION: Being on top of the evidence hierarchy, systematic review and meta-analysis are the keys to informed clinical decision-making. Updating protocol status and external funding are significant influences on their publications. More attentions should be paid to the methodological quality of this type of publication.

Our study describes the reported rate of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, declaration of Helsinki (DoH), and informed consent in the case reports and case series and investigates factors associated with the ethical approval report. We searched PubMed for case reports and case series from 2006 to 2017. Annually, we obtained the first 20 articles of a case report cluster from 20 distinct publications. This analysis initially contained at least 2400 papers, with 100 papers each study design and year. Only 26 (5.4%) of 480 included studies reported IRB approval, DoH approval, and participant informed consent; 58 (12.1%) reported two out of three ethical statements (DoH, informed consent, IRB); and 151 (31.5%) reported only one, leading to nearly 245 studies (51.0%) did not report any ethical approval item. Both clusters mentioned the DoH the least. Only years, ages, ethical item types, and cluster types were associated with ethical reporting practices. This study found the serious under-reporting of ethical practices in both case reports and case series.