Q. Hello. I am an adjunct faculty member and I was helping out at the PP560 course yesterday. Will you please refresh my memory about how to use Cochrane

in order to retrieve an answer to a drug information question? I remember that you could do something so that Cochrane can analyze the existing articles to come up with an answer. Thanks.

Answer

Hi, Krishna--

The authors of Cochrane systematic reviews have already done the analysis of the clinical trials for you.   These systematic reviews include very detailed information about how the authors looked for clinical trials on a specific topic, how they selected the clinical trials that they analyzed and what results they found.  For most drug information questions, you are really most concerned with their results and will pay the closest attention to the "Background" and "Plain Language Summary" sections.  The systematic reviews are updated but you will want to double-check the date of any review you use, so that you can spot any recent clinical trials that were not included in the analysis.

You can find Cochrane systematic reviews by searching PubMed as we did in the PP 560 recitation sessions, or you can find them by searching the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in Wiley Online (as long as you have an @usciences.edu e-mail address).


I hope this has answered your questions about Cochrane.  If not, please let me know--

--Leslie

Leslie Ann Bowman

Associate Professor, Information Science

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  • Last Updated Dec 11, 2018
  • Views 25
  • Answered By Leslie Ann Bowman

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