Facilitating healthcare decisions by assessing the certainty in the evidence from preclinical animal studies.

ABSTRACT: Laboratory animal studies are used in a wide range of human health related research areas, such as basic biomedical research, drug research, experimental surgery and environmental health. The results of these studies can be used to inform decisions regarding clinical research in humans, for example the decision to proceed to clinical trials. If the research question relates to potential harms with no expectation of benefit (e.g., toxicology), studies in experimental animals may provide the only relevant or controlled data and directly inform clinical management decisions. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are important tools to provide robust and informative evidence summaries of these animal studies. Rating how certain we are about the evidence could provide important information about

SUBMITTER: Hooijmans CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5764235 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature