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 (CMED) group. Since 2000, the CMED group has been preparing systematic reviews on the benefits and harms of health-care interventions for metabolic and endocrine disorders, particularly diabetes mellitus and obesity. The editorial base is located at the Institute of General Practice of the University Hospital Duesseldorf, Germany (Heinrich-Heine University). It was led by Prof. Bernd Richter from 2000-2020. Since April 2021 CMED is being led by Dr. Brenda Bongaerts.

CMED group'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.
We primarily focus on systematic reviews which evaluate patient-important outcomes measures. Review authors who wish to analyse surrogate outcomes like laboratory parameters may do so but always have to investigate a standard set of patient-important endpoints. Exclusive evaluation of surrogate/interim indicators only will not be possible. If review authors want to include non-experimental or uncontrolled studies in their Cochrane review they should contact us before or at title registration stage.

Due to the CMED group'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. We require at least one author experienced in writing Cochrane systematic reviews to be an active member of the review authors team. Integration of a statistician with experience in meta-analysis is strongly recommended. 

CMED endorses the methodological standards for the conduct and reporting of Cochrane intervention reviews (Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews, MECIR).