Terapia de glucosamina en comparación con ibuprofeno para el dolor articular

CRD COMMENTARY:

The authors addressed a clear review question that was well defined in terms of the interventions, participants, study designs and outcome measures to be assessed. The literature search was adequate, but was restricted to published studies only. This means that relevant unpublished studies may have been missed. The authors did not report a method for assessing the studies for inclusion in the review and, therefore, it is difficult to comment on whether any bias may have been introduced into this process. Likewise, no details of the validity assessment or data extraction were provided. There were minimal details on the characteristics of the primary studies; further participant details, such as disease severity, would have been helpful. The use of a narrative synthesis was appropriate, but the reviewers failed to explore how differences in the sample size or year of publication might have influenced the results obtained.
Overall, this was a poorly conducted and reported review. The authors failed to obtain copies of two studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria, thus the evidence base reviewed was incomplete. The results of the review should, therefore, be treated with caution.