Systematic Review Methodology in Biomedical Evidence Generation

In evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews (SRs) are often performed to determine the best treatment. This methodology is a systematic process to find and collate all the relevant evidence to answer a research question. Researchers in other health-related questions don’t often use this methodology, though this could be useful. In this thesis, we explore how the SR method needs to be tailored to make it most useful for health-related research questions.

We look at five research questions and adjusted the methodology to best fit the question. First, we use thesauri (structured lists of search terms) to select exactly which search terms we want to use, to find relevant literature about risk factors for criminality. Second, we looked at what scientific journals and newspapers wrote about drug prices, to get a broad perspective. Because of our work and our experience in drug pricing, we could respond to other published papers. Third, we looked at how to score proteins in gene doping, so that we could predict which one would be most likely to be abused. Fourth, we looked at cholesterol-lowering fibres in animal research, and found publication bias. Finally, we wrote a narrative review on depression in adolescents, because that was more appropriate than an SR to reach a breakthrough in depression treatment.

In conclusion, to write good SRs on health-related research, extensive tailoring of the methodology is required. This requires expertise in SR methodology, but adds high value to scientific progress.