Altman, Douglas G.

Egger, Matthias

Pocock, Stuart

Vandenbroucke, Jan P.

von Elm, Erik

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Letters to the EditorRE: ‘‘QUALITY OF REPORTING OF OBSERVATIONAL LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH’’d d d d d d d d dWe read the Journal article by Tooth et al. (1) with greatinterest. The authors propose a checklist to assist authorsreporting observational longitudinal studies. Clearly, thereis a need to improve the reporting of observational research(2), but neither for longitudinal studies nor for other studydesigns do widely endorsed recommendations on the report-ing of observational epidemiologic studies exist. In contrast,in the realm of randomized controlled trials research, theConsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT)(3) have been supported by a large number of health-carejournals and editorial groups, including the InternationalCommittee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, VancouverGroup), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), and theWorld Association of Medical Editors (WAME).We believe that several elements were crucial to thesuccess of CONSORT. Firstly, the recommendations weredeveloped by an international group of clinical trialists, stat-isticians, and epidemiologists, which also included promi-nent members of the constituency that ultimately needs to beconvinced about the usefulness of such checklists: the editorsof journals that regularly publish trials. Secondly, the work-ing group published not only the recommendations but alsoan explanatory document (4), which reviewed the empirical1032 Am J Epidemiol 2005;162:1032–1035American Journal of EpidemiologyCopyright ª 2005 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public HealthAll rights reserved; printed in U.S.A.Vol. 162, No. 10evidence and theoretical considerations for each checklistitem and gave examples of good reporting practice. Thisarticle (4) helped make the process of guidelines develop-ment more transparent and probably increased acceptanceof the proposed recommendations. Finally, the CONSORTgroup always stressed the evolving nature of the statement,with regular updates, extensions for trials with other thanparallel-group design, and a permanent invitation to the com-munity to comment on the current version.The items proposed by Tooth et al. (1) are useful to in-form the development of a CONSORT-type checklist forlongitudinal studies. Recently, an interdisciplinary group ofepidemiologists, methodologists, medical statisticians, andeditors of general medical and epidemiologic journals metin Bristol, United Kingdom, to draft a checklist for case-control, cohort, and cross-sectional studies (5). This initia-tive, known as STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting ofObservational Studies in Epidemiology), has posted a draftof this checklist on its website (www.strobe-statement.org) as well as a summary of the discussions that led to itsformulation. We look forward to comments and criticism onthis draft checklist before submitting it for publication to-gether with an explanatory article.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSConflict of interest: none declared.REFERENCES1. Tooth L, Ware R, Bain C, et al. Quality of reporting of obser-vational longitudinal research. Am J Epidemiol 2005;161:280–8.2. Pocock SJ, Collier TJ, Dandreo KJ, et al. Issues in the re-porting of epidemiological studies: a survey of recent prac-tice. BMJ 2004;329:883.3. Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman DG. The CONSORT statement:revised recommendations for improving the quality of reportsof parallel-group randomised trials. Lancet 2001;357:1191–4.4. Altman DG, Schulz KF, Moher D, et al. The revised CONSORTstatement for reporting randomized trials: explanation andelaboration. Ann Intern Med 2001;134:663–94.5. von Elm E, Egger M. The scandal of poor epidemiologicalresearch. BMJ 2004;329:868–9.Erik von Elm1, Douglas G. Altman2, Stuart Pocock3,Jan P. Vandenbroucke4, and Matthias Egger1vonelm@ispm.unibe.ch1 Department of Social and Preventive Medicine,University of Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland2 Cancer Research UK/NHS Centre for Statistics inMedicine, Oxford OX3 7LF, United Kingdom3 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,University of London, London WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom4 Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Leiden UniversityHospital, 2300 RC Leiden, The NetherlandsDOI: 10.1093/aje/kwi314; Advance Access publication October 5, 2005Letters to the Editor 1033Am J Epidemiol 2005;162:1032–1035

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