Characteristics of systematic reviews evaluating treatments for COVID-19 registered in PROSPERO.

Characteristics and research collaboration of registered systematic reviews (SRs) on treatment modalities for coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) remain unclear. This study analysed research collaboration, interventions and outcome measures in registered SRs on COVID-19 treatments and pointed out the relevant problems. PROSPERO (international prospective register of systematic reviews) was searched for SRs on COVID-19 treatments as of 2 June 2020. Excel 2016 was used for descriptive analyses of the extracted data. VOSviewer 1.6.14 software was used to generate network maps for collaborations between countries and institutions. A total of 189 SRs were included, which were registered by 301 institutions from 39 countries. China (69, 36.50%) exhibited the highest output. Cooperation between countries was not close enough. As an institution, the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (7, 3.70%) had the highest output. There was close cooperation between institutions. Interventions included antiviral therapy (81, 42.86%), respiratory support (16, 8.47%), circulatory support (11, 5.82%), plasma therapy for convalescent patients (11, 5.82%), immunotherapy (9, 4.76%), TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) treatment (9, 4.76%), rehabilitation treatment (5, 2.65%), anti-inflammatory treatment (16, 8.47%) and other treatments (31, 16.40%). Concerning antiviral therapy (81, 42.86%), the most commonly used antiviral agents were chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine (26, 13.76%), followed by remdesivir (12, 6.35%), lobinavir/ritonavir (11, 5.82%), favipiravir (5, 2.65%), ribavirin (5, 2.65%), interferon (5, 2.65%), abiron (4, 2.12%) and abidor (4, 2.12%). The most frequently used primary and secondary outcomes were the mortality rate (92, 48.68%) and hospital stay length (48, 25.40%), respectively. The expression of the outcomes was not standardised. Many COVID-19 SRs on treatment modalities have been registered, with a low completion rate. Although there was some collaboration between countries and institutions in the currently registered SRs on treatment modalities for COVID-19 on PROSPERO, cooperation between countries should be further enhanced. More attention should be directed towards identifying deficiencies of outcome measures, and the standardisation of results should be maximised.

Effect of Taijiquan assisted rehabilitation for breast cancer patients: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Taijiquan, as a supplementary and alternative method, has attracted more and more attention in the treatment of breast cancer. But up to now, no systematic review has been performed to evaluate the efficacy of Taijiquan in the treatment of breast cancer. In this study, Cochrane systematic review method will be used to evaluate the effect of Taijiquan in the rehabilitation process of breast cancer patients after treatment. METHODS: PubMed, Embase. com, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, and SinoMed will be searched to identify relevant studies up to May 31, 2021. We will include randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of the application of Taijiquan in post-treatment breast cancer patients. We will use the Cochrane bias risk assessment tool to assess the quality of included RCTs. We will use Stata 13.0 to perform pairwise meta-analyses using the inverse variance method. Subgroup analyses and sensitivity analyses will be conducted to investigate the sources of heterogeneity. RESULTS: The results of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. CONCLUSION: This study will comprehensively evaluate the efficacy of Taijiquan in the rehabilitation treatment of breast cancer. The results of this study will provide high-quality evidence to support clinical practice and guidelines development.