Article Summary: Systematic Review/Meta-Analyses Assignment

Article Summary: Systematic Review/Meta-Analyses Assignment

A systematic review highlights the scientific literature using specified strategies to find pertinent studies and impartial techniques to combine them. It strives to be simple in its description of targets, available tools, and procedures1. Additionally, it strives to be objective, replicable, and transparent in its methods and results, as well as systematic in its documenting of the literature1. Systematic reviews are essential since they make the available proof more accessible for clinical decision-makers.

In the article Effects of nutritional education interventions on metabolic risk in children and adolescents: a systematic review of controlled trials, Leis et al. sought to determine how nutritional education programs affected the key characteristics of metabolic syndrome 2. These characteristics included glucose intolerance, high blood pressure, fasting hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, and adiposity 2. Their review question was: “Do nutritional education interventions impact metabolic risk in children and adolescents?” The authors used a systematic review research design to summarize the results of various primary research trials and investigations3. The authors also examined case-control studies and clinical testing on children and teenagers2. In any experiment, the independent variable is the element that the researcher manipulates, while the dependent variable is the measured outcome. In this review, nutritional educational intervention is the independent variable, while metabolic syndrome features are the dependent variable. 

Sampling is the assortment of a subcategory of the population of interest in an investigation4. The authors in this study used a structured, comprehensive, and transparent sample selection method. They followed the established inclusion and exclusion criteria, provided detailed explanations of all processes conducted, and included all pertinent study characteristics that helped address the review’s research question. For the study, children and teenagers from the general population who took part in random or nonrandomized controlled trials published from 1 January 1900 to 15 August 2019 in Spanish or English have been used. Participants could be of any ethnicity as well. They also disclosed the final sample and the steps used in the methodology to get there. In particular, the authors included ten studies from a pool of 827 articles in the systematic review. Thanks to this sample, they could accurately and impartially represent the current level of knowledge about the impact of dietary education programs on metabolism vulnerability in children and adolescents. 

Investigators analyze systematic reviews’ results qualitatively or quantitatively. Quantitative analysis occurs through statistical techniques, such as numeric effect estimates and meta-analyses. The evaluation in this study was qualitative, and the authors presented it as a textual narrative. It unearthed a beneficial influence in decreasing abdominal obesity. Nevertheless, evidence about the effect on fasting hyperglycemia, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia were inconclusive2. 

Critique

The most outstanding strength of this study was its explicit methodology. The authors formulated the research question following the criteria of the PICOS (population, intervention, comparison, outcomes, settings). Equally, they established strict eligibility benchmarks for inclusion and exclusion to select the primary studies for review. Indeed, they pre-specified every methodology stage to the last detail, making the study transparent and reproducible. The study extensively combed through all information on dietary intervention studies in children and adolescents over time. However, the review was prone to the risk of attrition, discovery, reporting biases, performance, and selection. A bias is a systematic or methodological error that causes study outcomes misrepresentation. Most acknowledged errors in systematic review occur in the selection and publication phases. The authors reported a high risk of selection and attrition bias in the nonrandomized trials. Overall, the study was comprehensive, relevant, and reproducible. 

Conclusion

In summary, systematic reviews are indispensable since they make the available proof more accessible for clinical decision-makers. The article Effects of nutritional education interventions on metabolic risk in children and adolescents: a systematic review of controlled trials supports nutritional education initiatives’ positive effects on childhood and teenage abdominal obesity. It determines the treatments’ most effective components, assisting medical practitioners and nutritionists in customizing plans to the needs of the kids who benefit the most from them. However, additional research is necessary to establish if these benefits persist into adulthood. 

References

1. Siddaway A, Wood A, Hedges L. How to do a systematic review: a best practice guide for conducting and reporting narrative reviews, meta-analyses, and meta-syntheses. Annual Review of Psychology. 2019;70(1):747-770. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-102803

2. Leis R, de Lamas C, de Castro M, Picáns R, Gil-Campos M, Couce M. Effects of nutritional education interventions on metabolic risk in children and adolescents: a systematic review of controlled trials. Nutrients. 2019;12(1):31. doi:10.3390/nu12010031

3. Ranganathan P, Aggarwal R. Study designs: Part 7 – Systematic reviews. Perspectives in Clinical Research. 2020;11(2):97. doi:10.4103/picr.picr_84_20

4. Hiebl M. Sample selection in systematic literature reviews of management research. Organizational Research Methods. 2021:109442812098685. doi:10.1177/1094428120986851