The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The reviewer JY declared a shared parent affiliation with the authors to the handling editor at the time of review.作者: tim889 时间: 2022-9-9 14:26
本帖最后由 tim889 于 2022-9-8 22:28 编辑
StephenW 发表于 2022-9-8 22:12
回复 ematrix 的帖子
"1,发表的该研究,审稿人都是来自于有关联甚至同单位的人。这显然不是一个正规科学 ...
当我存在conflict of interest的时候会decline这个review的邀请。所以reviewer水分到底有多大,大家自己心里掂量吧,况且reviewer信息都还是公开的。问题是editor不应该主动找同一institute的做reviewer。作者: StephenW 时间: 2022-9-9 14:36
按照检索策略的纳入和排除标准,使用五个数据库共识别出5017篇出版物,其中1993条因重复而被删除,928条因浏览标题和摘要而被排除,2067条因阅读全文而被删除.最后,该 NMA 收录了 29 篇文章(Wang et al., 2004; Wang, 2005; Zhang et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2016; Gu, 2018; Li, 2018;肖和胡,2018;徐等,2018;张等,2018;赵,2018;陈等,2019;梁,2019;石,2019;狄和夏,2020;李等, 2020;Rong 等,2020;Wang,2020;Yin 等,2020;Yu 等,2020;Zhang,2020;Zhang 和 Li,2020;Du 等,2021;Huang,2021;Li 等al., 2021; Wang, 2021; Zhang, 2021; Zhao, 2021; Zhu et al., 2021)。研究选择的详细信息见图 1,纳入 RCT 的特征总结于表 1。每个配方的成分和所有纳入出版物中的质量控制措施见表 2。因此,四个代表性的组成“扶正化瘀片/胶囊”、“大黄哲虫丸”、“安络化纤丸”、“别加软肝片”等方剂见补充资料S3。
Materials and methods
This NMA was performed following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISRMA) statement (Liberati et al., 2009) (Supplementary Information S1).
Data sources and search strategy
We retrieved electronic databases of PubMed, MEDLINE Complete, OVID EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and WanFang Data from their establishment to 17 Aug 2021. No language limitation was applied. The initial search strategies were performed as follows: “traditional Chinese medicine (TCM),” “Chinese medicine,” “herbs,” “herbal medicine,” “Fuzheng Huayu,” “Dahuang Zhechong,” “Anluo Huaxian,” “Biejia Ruangan,” “antiviral drugs/agents,” “entecavir,” “adefovir,” “chronic hepatits B liver fibrosis,” “chronic hepatits B,” “hepatitis B virus,” “liver fibrosis,” “hepatic fibrosis,” and “randomized controlled trials (RCTs).” Detailed information of all electronic databases is displayed in Supplementary Information S2.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Two investigators (Yun-kai Dai and Hai-na Fan) independently read the abstracts and full articles. Following the criteria (participants, interventions, comparisons, outcomes, and study design, PICOS), we included certain items in this research: RCTs; TCMs or nucleos (t) ide analogs in interventions; adults only; course of treatment >1 month; and Jadad score >2. Meanwhile, some items should be excluded: HBV negative; decompensated liver cirrhosis; no serum indicator of liver fibrosis in outcomes; meta-analyses or systematic reviews; conference summaries or abstracts only; case reports; single-sex researches; animal experiments or fundamental experiment studies; incomplete or error information; scientific and technological achievements; non-pharmaceutical therapy; and duplicates.
Data abstraction and quality evaluation
Two people (Yun-kai Dai and Yong-hong Hu), respectively, extracted relevant data and evaluated the methodological quality. Detailed information to be abstracted were listed as follows: first author and year of publication, patients’ age and gender, severity of the disease, courses of disease and treatment, interventions and outcomes (clinical efficacy, serum biomarkers of liver fibrosis, and serum parameters for liver function), administration route, and side effects. Missing information was remedied by getting in touch with the first or corresponding authors. Methodological quality evaluation of each literature was evaluated by means of the Cochrane Collaboration Recommendations assessment tool (Higgins et al., 2011). The assessment of risk of bias includes six domains: random sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, blinding of outcomes assessment, incomplete outcome data, and selective reporting. Each element of these domains was used to evaluate the included trials as low, unclear, or high risk. Meanwhile, the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE), online guideline “https://gdt.gradepro.org/app/”, was applied to assess the evidence quality as high, moderate, low, and very low (Puhan et al., 2014).
Statistical analysis
Stata version 13.0 software was used to compare the efficacy and safety of different TCM drugs across the included studies. Based on the Bayesian framework and the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, WinBUGS version 1.4.3 was used for the evaluation and procession of research data a priori. In order to accommodate the model, three chains and non-informative uniform and normal priori distributions were applied (Ades et al., 2006; Sutton et al., 2008). After that, to gain their posterior distributions, 10 thinning intervals each chain and 50,000 iterations were all set. As for the simulation iterations, the top 20,000 were used for annealing in order to eliminate the impacts of the initial value, while the bottom 30,000 were applied to sampling. As for effect sizes, the standardized mean difference (SMD) was produced for continuous variable data, and the relative risk (RR) was pooled for dichotomous outcomes. Both of them, conducting a random effects model to minimize the risk, were used for the summarization of each comparison effect, with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs), and a network plot, where node sizes are representative of the number of sufferers, while connection sizes are related to the number of RCTs, was produced to examine the direct and indirect evidence involving in multiple-intervention comparisons. The Brooks–Gelman–Rubin statistic using the potential scale reduction factor (PSRF) value was conducted to assess model convergence. Meanwhile, the node-splitting analysis was calculated to evaluate the consistency. The inconsistency index statistic (I2) was used to quantify the heterogeneity between different treatment strategies. In order to investigate the stability of results, a sensitivity analysis was carried out. In addition, the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA) was ranked to examine the efficacy and safety of all included strategies in each outcome.
Results
Literature screening
Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria in search strategies, a total of 5,017 publications were identified using five databases, of which 1,993 records were removed because of duplicates, 928 were excluded by browsing titles and abstracts, and 2,067 were removed by reading full-text articles. Finally, 29 articles were included in this NMA (Wang et al., 2004; Wang, 2005; Zhang et al., 2006; Wang et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2016; Gu, 2018; Li, 2018; Xiao and Hu, 2018; Xu et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2018; Zhao, 2018; Chen et al., 2019; Liang, 2019; Shi, 2019; Di and Xia, 2020; Li et al., 2020; Rong et al., 2020; Wang, 2020; Yin et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2020; Zhang, 2020; Zhang and Li, 2020; Du et al., 2021; Huang, 2021; Li et al., 2021; Wang, 2021; Zhang, 2021; Zhao, 2021; Zhu et al., 2021). Detailed information of study selection can be found in Figure 1, and characteristics of the included RCTs are concluded in Table 1. Ingredients of each formula and quality control measures in all included publications are shown in Table 2. Accordingly, the composition of the four representative formulas including “Fuzheng Huayu tablet/capsule,” “Dahuang Zhechong pill,” “Anluo Huaxian pill,” and “Biejia Ruangan tablet” is listed in Supplementary Information S3. 作者: tim889 时间: 2022-9-9 14:43