The Cochrane Diabetes Group was formed in 1994. The Editorial Base was located in Leeds (UK). This group discontinued its work in 1998 due to lack of funding. Mid 1999 Michael Berger and Bernd Richter from the Department of Metabolic Diseases and Nutrition at the Heinrich-Heine University in Duesseldorf, Germany took responsibility for the former work of the Diabetes Review Group and expanded its scope to that of the new Cochrane Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders Group (CMED). Since 2000, the CMED has been preparing systematic reviews on the benefits and harms of healthcare interventions for metabolic and endocrine disorders, particularly diabetes mellitus and obesity. The Editorial Base is located at the Department of General Practice (website) at the University Hospital Duesseldorf, Germany (Heinrich-Heine University) and is led by Professor Bernd Richter. The CMED's main area of work is the evaluation of the effects of health care interventions relevant to the prevention, treatment or management, and rehabilitation of metabolic, nutritional and endocrine disorders. The CMED expanded its scope to systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy within the same topic areas. The CMED primarily focuses on systematic reviews which evaluate patient-orientated outcomes measures. Authors who wish to analyse surrogate outcomes like laboratory parameters may do so but always have to investigate a standard set of patient-orientated endpoints. Exclusive evaluation of surrogate indicators only will not be possible. If authors want to include non-experimental or uncontrolled studies in their review they should contact the CMED before or at title registration stage (see 'New authors').

Due to the CMED's limited resources prioritisation policies apply: title proposals investigating questions of considerable public-health relevance and providing substantial evidence on patient-important outcome measures receive priority. Depending on context and methodological as well as clinical complexity at least one of the review authors should have published one or more Cochrane reviews. Integration of a statistician with experience in meta-analysis is strongly recommended.

The CMED endorses and is determined to implement the methodological standards for the conduct and reporting of Cochrane intervention reviews (Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR)).

Authors should always check this website for up-to-date information during all phases of their review process.

Regularly updated evidence-based healthcare databases User guides Access options