The Cochrane Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders (CMED) Group is primarily concerned with the evaluation of randomised controlled trials and other controlled health care interventions relevant to the prevention, treatment or management, and rehabilitation of metabolic, nutritional and endocrine disorders (such as diabetes mellitus, obesity and thyroid diseases).
Our aim is to serve several groups of people, including:
- Health care workers - by providing high quality, regularly updated and easily accessible summaries of scientific knowledge.
- Patients (present and potential) and relatives - directly by providing them with high quality information; indirectly by supporting health care workers and policy-makers.
- Researchers and those who commission research - by accurately summarising present knowledge and identifying research gaps; also through development of methodology for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
- Policy-makers - by producing accessible and reliable summaries, free of the biases which may be present in submissions by groups with a particular interest (for example those seeking health-care funding). Support to policy-makers may be indirect, via support to those who produce policy analyses for governments and others, such as health technology assessment units.
- Life sciences students - through the provision of concise systematic reviews of difficult topics.
Prioritisation
The CMED group primarily focuses on systematic reviews which evaluate patient-important 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-important endpoints. Exclusive evaluation of surrogate/interim indicators only will not be possible. Furthermore, due to limited resources authors should address clinically relevant questions of significant public health relevance. If in doubt, please contact the editorial base.