Neurological research in children: challenges and misconceptions

Abstract

Conducting clinical research in children with neurological disorders can be challenging. In the USA, the relative frequency of many neurological disorders is lower in children than in adults. As a result, clinicians and peer reviewers might be less familiar with paediatric neurological research compared with research in adults. When the time comes to write up study findings and submit a paper for publication, researchers in paediatric neurology can sometimes face a review process dominated by specialists in adult disciplines. Identification of differences between paediatric and adult clinical research could help to reduce unnecessary biases that frequently arise during the peer review process, enabling appropriate evaluation of high-quality clinical research in children. I suggest that considerations during peer review should include differences between adult and paediatric clinical research with respect to appropriate study design, choice of suitable outcomes, procedures for ethics approval and informed consent, and interpretation of statistical results.