Quality Assessment for Systematic Review /Meta-Analysis on Antidepressant Therapy Published in Chinese Journals

A lot of systematic reviews/meta-analyses compiled by Chinese professionals and published in Chinese medical journals bring a lot of perplexity as they help to a certain extent to make decision in some conflicting clinical results. This study aims to assess the quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on antidepressant therapy published in Chinese journals. The reviews/meta-analyses on antidepressant therapy were identified by searching three main Chinese data banks i.e., Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data (WF) and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM). A pre-stated criterion was used for review/meta-analysis selection. All reviews were evaluated by two reviewers separately. Data in qualified reviews were extracted into a Microsoft Excel database for analysis. Two assessment tools were used: (1) the Overview Quality Assessment Questionnaire (OQAQ) and (2) Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA). Sixty eight reviews/meta-analyses were included in this study. More than 50% of them had methodological and reporting defects which could have reduced the reliability of the review/meta-analysis results. The flaws were mainly low quality of search strategy, inappropriate bias control and absence of quality assessment for original study.