Preclinical Experiments for Hypospadias Surgery: Systematic Review and Quality Assessment

Abstract

Background: There is a steadily growing number of different reconstructive surgical procedures for hypospadias that were tested on animal models prior to their human application. However, the clinical translatability and reproducibility of the results encountered in preclinical urethral reconstruction experiments is considered poor, with significant factors contributing to the poor design and reporting of animal experiments. Our objective was to evaluate the quality of the design and reporting in published articles of urethral reconstructive preclinical studies.Methods: Both PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for animal urethral repair experiments between January 2014 and September 2019. Internal quality (bias) was evaluated through several signaling questions arising from the Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory animal Experimentation (SYRCLE), while the quality of reporting was assessed by the Animal Research: Reporting of In vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines by scoring of a 20-item checklist.Results: A total of 638 articles were initially screened after the literature search. Employing the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 30 studies were chosen for full-text screening and 21 studies were considered eligible for the quality assessment. The mean score of the checklist was 66%. The elements that accomplished the highest grades included the number of animals utilized, the number in each investigational and control group, and the delineation of investigational conclusions. The items that were least commonly stated comprised information about the experimental method, housing and husbandry, rationalization of the number of animals, and reporting of adverse events. No paper stated the sample size estimation.Conclusion: We found that several critical experiment design principles were poorly reported, which hinders a rigorous appraisal of the scientific quality and reproducibility of the experiments. A comprehensive implementation of the ARRIVE guidelines in animal studies exploring urethral repair is necessary to facilitate the effective translation of preclinical research findings into clinical therapies.

Effects of Acupuncture on Cancer Pain in Animal Intervention Studies: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment

“…Preclinical studies play an important role in scientific progress and the discovery of new and potentially successful treatments, assuming that they are designed, conducted, evaluated, and adequately reported in accordance with internationally agreed guidelines. 35 Fundamental experimental design components are often overlooked in scientific papers, which result in such studies being uninterpretable and difficult to reproduce, 6 and preclinical studies on acupuncture for cancer pain do not appear to be an exemption.…”

Current perspectives in hypospadias research: A scoping review of articles published in 2021 (Review)

“…Experiments on animals are rare, poorly reported, less detailed and not reproducible (as a review found) (259). A single urethral reconstruction is reported in a rabbit model.…”