Abstract
BackgroundRecently, we have published an overview of systematic reviews in allergy epidemiology and identified asthma as the most commonly reviewed allergic disease. Building on this work, we aimed to investigate the quality of systematic reviews in asthma using the AMSTAR checklist and to provide a reference for future, more in-depth assessment of the extent of previous knowledge.MethodsWe included all 307 systematic reviews indexed with asthma, including occupational asthma, and/or wheeze from our previous search in PubMed and EMBASE up to December 2014 for systematic reviews on epidemiological research on allergic diseases. Topics of the included systematic reviews were indexed and we applied the AMSTAR checklist for methodological quality to all. Statistical analyses include description of lower and upper bounds of AMSTAR scores and variation across publication time and topics.ResultsOf 43 topics catalogued, family history, birth weight, and feeding of formula were only covered once in systematic reviews published from 2011 onwards. Overall, at least one meta-analysis was conducted for all topics except for “social determinants”, “perinatal”, “birth weight”, and “climate”. AMSTAR quality scores were significantly higher in more recently published systematic reviews, in those with meta-analysis, and in Cochrane reviews. There was evidence of variation of quality across topics even, after accounting for these characteristics. Genetic factors in asthma development were often covered by systematic reviews with some evidence of unsubstantiated updates or repetition.ConclusionsWe present a comprehensive overview with an indexed database of published systematic reviews in asthma epidemiology including quality scores. We highlight some topics including active smoking and pets, which should be considered for future systematic reviews. We propose that our search strategy and database could be a basis for topic-specific overviews of systematic reviews in asthma epidemiology.
Highlights
We have published an overview of systematic reviews in allergy epidemiology and identified asthma as the most commonly reviewed allergic disease
We are aware of three systematic reviews which have examined the original literature rather than systematic reviews on some areas of asthma epidemiology: The first searched for articles describing risk factors for asthma incidence and the second aimed at comprehensively reviewing the original literature on selected risk and protective factors for asthma [5, 6]
If the line thickness matches the bubble diameter, this means that all articles indexed with that topic were indexed with asthma; if the line is thinner than the bubble diameter, the topic is indexed solely with other allergic diseases as previously published [8]
Summary
We have published an overview of systematic reviews in allergy epidemiology and identified asthma as the most commonly reviewed allergic disease. One overview of systematic reviews, providing a metaanalysis of risk and protective factors on childhood asthma, included 42 systematic reviews published up to January 2016 [3]. Of note, this was focused on childhood, on non-genetic factors, and on systematic reviews with. Genuneit et al Clin Transl Allergy (2017) 7:12 meta-analysis Another overview of systematic reviews was restricted to the association of diet with asthma [4]. The third conducted a more specific search to identify original articles on the genetic predisposition to asthma and atopy over a period of 6 years [7]
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