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Preclinical studies often fail to report key details of experiments


January 18, 2017



Males and females often respond to drugs differently, so it would seem obvious that when researchers are testing drugs in animal models, they would mention their sex. But new research led by Dr. Marc Avey shows that this isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, preclinical researchers often leave out many other key details when publishing their results. As outlined in PLOS ONE, Dr. Avey and his colleagues examined all known preclinical research papers on mesenchymal stem cell therapy for acute lung injury. They systematically looked at whether or not each of these 47 papers reported more than 100 different items known to affect experimental results, ranging from sex to randomization to food. Overall, they found that less than half of the items were reported properly. The researchers hope the study will lead to better reporting, which would help with the translation of promising preclinical therapies to patients. The Centre for Journalology is available to help preclinical and clinical researchers with reporting.

Authors: Marc T. Avey, David Moher, Katrina J. Sullivan, Dean Fergusson, Gilly Griffin, Jeremy M. Grimshaw, Brian Hutton, Manoj M. Lalu, Malcolm Macleod, John Marshall, Shirley H. J. Mei, Michael Rudnicki, Duncan J. Stewart, Alexis F. Turgeon, Lauralyn McIntyre, Canadian Critical Care Translational Biology Group.

Funding: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, The Ottawa Hospital Foundation

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