Title :
A systematic review to investigate how effective cannabinoids are as a potential treatment strategy for adults suffering with rheumatoid arthritis.
Types of research studies to include:
- Randomised control trials , Meta-analysis, Narrative synthesis
Articles will be from:
- web of science
- pubmed
- Pro quest
- Science direct etc
Exclusion criteria –
• Papers that do not mention cannabinoids as a treatment strategy at all.
• Papers that have not been translated into the English language. Although we recognise that
this may introduce an element of bias, we do not have the resources to translate material
within the timeframe of this study.
• Papers that mix results from paediatric patients (<18 years) with adult outcomes may lead to
erroneous findings as children may respond differently to cannabinoids than adults.
Inclusion criteria –
• Will include studies on cannabinoids as a treatment strategy for rheumatoid arthritis but will
not exclude papers which look at other autoimmune diseases.
• Outcome measures that include changes to disease score index, quality of life and/or side
effects and/or long-term effects.
• Patients will need to have been randomised and could potentially be compared to other
patients on different treatment strategies.
Introduction:
The focus of this research was to examinethe effectiveness of administering cannabinoids asa potential therapy option for adultswith rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This knowledgecould be utilised to alter clinical guidelinesregarding the use of cannabinoids in patientswith rheumatoid arthritis andother autoimmune illnesses, allowing for newkinds of personalised treatment to be developedto provide more options for patients.
The research four primary aims: conducta meta-analysis to determine the efficacy
of cannabinoids in treating rheumatoidarthritis, assess the strength of evidence in thisarea by looking for population bias and publicationbias, characterise the relative risk of adverseeffects-in rheumatoid arthritis patients usinga narrative synthesis approach, andto investigate the use of cannabis in the treatmentof rheumatoid arthritis patients to see howstrong the evidence is.
Methods:
The databases of PubMed , Web of Science , ProQuest , ScienceDirect and Cochrane were used to search for papers specifically in the English language from within the last 10 years .
• After search strategies were employed , articles were further screened based upon their titles or abstracts which were then stored on a software called Mendley where any duplicates were erased. Articles without access to full text were also removed.
• The included publications were further analysed for information on research design, patient characteristics, interventions, comparators, and outcomes.
• Remember, as you start sifting through
your papers keep a record of how many
you are including or excluding and why.
You will need this to create your PRISMA
flow diagram
A Prismadiagram was made based upon these search results.(include prisma diagram for methods!)
• The original articles’ risk of bias (RoB) was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration’s risk of bias assessment.
-include study characteristics table
Once you know which papers you are
going to include in your systematic review,
you should try to assess the quality of each
of those papers. This stage of the process
uses a Critical Appraisal Tool (CAT) to do
this in a robust manner. The video below
explains this in a bit more detail.
o Results will consider whether or not cannabinoids could be an effective for of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis OR if there is not enough evidence to make an informed conclusion.
Results –include Forrest plots and funnel plots!!
o In the discussion, focus also on the use of cannabinoids in also treating osteoarthritis
Limitations and further study section – identify any gaps in knowledge
Conclusion