Improving the quality of toxicology and environmental health systematic reviews:What journal editors can do

Systematic reviews are fast increasing in prevalence in the toxicology and environmental health literature. However, how well these complex research projects are being conducted and reported is unclear. Since editors have an essential role in ensuring the scientific quality of manuscripts being published in their journals, a workshop was convened where editors, systematic review practitioners, and research quality control experts could discuss what editors can do to ensure the systematic reviews they publish are of sufficient scientific quality. Interventions were explored along four themes: setting standards; reviewing protocols; optimizing editorial workflows; and measuring the effectiveness of editorial interventions. In total, 58 editorial interventions were proposed. Of these, 26 were shortlisted for being potentially effective, and 5 were prioritized as short-term actions that editors could relatively easily take to improve the quality of published systematic reviews. Recent progress in improving systematic reviews is summarized, and outstanding challenges to further progress are highlighted

Qualitative methods for integrating evidence within and across evidence streams for hazard identification

In evidence‐based scientific assessments, evidence synthesis is the step that occurs after collecting the data relevant to a clearly formulated research question and appraising the validity of the studies selected for the assessment, according to structured and pre‐defined approaches. When studies are readily comparable, evidence synthesis is usually carried out through meta‐analysis. In hazard assessment in chemical risk assessment (CRA), the process for combining evidence, ‘evidence integration’, is a recognised challenge as the underlying evidence bases are very diverse and not readily comparable (owing e.g. to varying degrees of validity and precision, diverse data types, different populations and species, models, end‐points, routes of exposure, and evidence streams ‐ human observational studies, experimental animal studies, in vitro and computational models data). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the Evidence‐Based Toxicology Collaboration (EBTC) organised a Colloquium to develop a multistakeholder understanding of the best practices, challenges and research needs for evidence integration in CRA, with a focus on hazard identification and on combining multiple studies and end‐points for dose–response modelling. The methods discussed included: qualitative methods for integrating evidence within‐ and across evidence streams; bias‐adjusted meta‐analysis; quantitative approaches to combine evidence across evidence streams; and quantitative approaches for combining multiple end‐points and multiple studies for dose–response modelling. All these methods showed advantages and needs for further development, testing, validation and effective implementation. Support to this could be provided by: more published primary toxicological and epidemiological data; optimisation of study design; a shared primary data repository; the establishment of a community of knowledge of toxicologists, epidemiologists and statisticians. Equally, to be conducted soundly, evidence integration in CRA should be undertaken by multidisciplinary groups (toxicologists and methodologists knowledgeable of the various integration techniques). EFSA and EBTC will continue the collaboration towards the development, testing and validation of best practices for evidence‐based CR

Cannabidiol Literature Scoping Review Protocol

The objective of this review was to systematically map the publicly available safety-related literature for cannabidiol (CBD)

Research Protocol

This protocol was developed in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Reviewers' Manual 2015 - Methodology for JBI Scoping Reviews. This protocol outlines the predefined methodology to be implemented during this research

Supplemental Material, DS1_IJT_10.1177_1091581818754330 - Role of Risk of Bias in Systematic Review for Chemical Risk Assessment: A Case Study in Understanding the Relationship Between Congenital Heart Defects and Exposures to Trichloroethylene

<p>Supplemental Material, DS1_IJT_10.1177_1091581818754330 for Role of Risk of Bias in Systematic Review for Chemical Risk Assessment: A Case Study in Understanding the Relationship Between Congenital Heart Defects and Exposures to Trichloroethylene by Daniele Wikoff, Jon D. Urban, Seneca Harvey, and Laurie C. Haws in International Journal of Toxicology</p

Supplemental Material, DS2_IJT_10.1177_1091581818754330 - Role of Risk of Bias in Systematic Review for Chemical Risk Assessment: A Case Study in Understanding the Relationship Between Congenital Heart Defects and Exposures to Trichloroethylene

<p>Supplemental Material, DS2_IJT_10.1177_1091581818754330 for Role of Risk of Bias in Systematic Review for Chemical Risk Assessment: A Case Study in Understanding the Relationship Between Congenital Heart Defects and Exposures to Trichloroethylene by Daniele Wikoff, Jon D. Urban, Seneca Harvey, and Laurie C. Haws in International Journal of Toxicology</p

Key Findings and Implications of a Recent Systematic Review of the Potential Adverse Effects of Caffeine Consumption in Healthy Adults, Pregnant Women, Adolescents, and Children

In 2016&ndash;2017, we conducted and published a systematic review on caffeine safety that set out to determine whether conclusions that were presented in the heavily cited Health Canada assessment, remain supported by more recent data. To that end, we reviewed data from 380 studies published between June 2001 and June 2015, which were identified from an initial batch of over 5000 articles through a stringent search and evaluation process. In the current paper, we use plain language to summarize our process and findings, with the intent of sharing additional context for broader reach to the general public. We addressed whether caffeine doses previously determined not to be associated with adverse effects by Health Canada (400 mg/day for healthy adults, 300 mg/day for pregnant women, 2.5 mg/kg body weight/day for adolescents and children, and 10 g/day for acute effects) remain appropriate for five outcome areas (acute toxicity, cardiovascular toxicity, bone &amp; calcium effects, behavior, and development and reproduction) in healthy adults, pregnant women, adolescents, and children. We used a weight-of-evidence approach to draw conclusions for each of the five outcomes, as well as more specific endpoints within those outcomes, which considered study quality, consistency, level of adversity, and magnitude of response. In general, updated evidence confirms the levels of intake that were put forth by Health Canada in 2003 as not being associated with any adverse health effects, and our results support a shift in caffeine research from healthy to sensitive populations