December 2008
Mid-Year Meeting and Symposium in Copenhagen, April 2009
In 2009, The Nordic Cochrane Centre will host the mid-year meetings of the Steering Group, the centre directors, and the executive group of co-ordinating editors. This year there will also be meetings for the broader group of editors, due to the new facilities provided with RevMan 5 such as Risk of Bias tables and Summary of Findings tables, and due to the recent employment of an editor-in-chief for The Cochrane Collaboration.
On Wednesday, 22 April, several of those coming to the mid-year meetings will contribute as speakers or chairs at a public symposium at Rigshospitalet:
"Evidence-based medicine (EBM) and Cochrane reviews: challenges and opportunities"
The programme is available at www.cochrane.dk. All are welcome and registration is not necessary.
Changes at the Norwegian Branch
Claire Glenton has taken leave for a year from her position at Kunnskapssenteret and as Director of the Norwegian branch to work as a senior scientist at SINTEF Health Research in Oslo in the field of global health. Andy Oxman will be Acting Director while she is on leave.
Espen Movik is the new Economics Editor for the Norwegian Satellite of EPOC based in Oslo. Simon Lewin has also joined the group in Oslo as an Affiliated Researcher and Susan Munabi-Babigumira will return in January 2009.
New hope for Cochrane Library for all Danes
In our last newsletter, issue 12 December 2007, we described the dramatic impact the limited access in Denmark to the Cochrane Library had had on the usage. The Minister of Health declared in November 2008 that there once again will be free access to the Cochrane Library for all Danes, in 2009.
Freiburg awards: best poster and Chris Silagy prize
Two staff members from the Centre received special recognition at the Colloquium in Freiburg in October.
Rasmus Moustgaard was awarded The Chris Silagy Prize for his “extraordinary contribution to the work of The Cochrane Collaboration” as IMS developer.
Britta Tendal won the The Thomas C Chalmers Award for best poster addressing methodological issues related to systematic reviews for The data extraction challenge: observer variation when extracting data for the calculation of a standardised mean difference. You can view the full poster at: www.cochrane.org/colloquium/2008/virtual_posters/?poster=148.
Author stipends and review summaries from the Norwegian EPOC satellite
The Norwegian Satellite of the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group is based at the Norwegian branch in Oslo and supports review authors in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) and reviews relevant to LMIC, as well as supporting EPOC review authors in the Nordic area.
In 2008, with support from The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the Satellite provided stipends to review authors from South Africa, Tanzania and India.
During 2008, the Satellite has also worked together with the SUPPORT Collaboration to produce summaries of systematic reviews relevant to health systems questions in LMIC. Twenty of these summaries were recently published as part of an overview in The Lancet summarising the evidence from systematic reviews of health systems arrangements and implementation strategies, with a particular focus on evidence relevant to primary health care in low-resource settings. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673608614038/abstract
Nine nationalities meet over Centre lunch
Five new staff members have joined the Nordic Cochrane Centre at the end of 2008. Now, when our colleagues from the Anaesthesia Group also join us for lunch, nine countries are represented at the table: Australia, Armenia, Colombia, Denmark, Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Italy, Moldavia, and Pakistan.
The software team has been expanded with Olga Ahtirschi, Test and Documentation Officer; Irfan Dawood, Systems Developer and Paolo Rosati, System Administrator.
Joining the research team are Andreas Lundh and Gloria Cordoba Currea.
Systematic Review of Acupuncture for Pain
Matias V. Madsen, Peter C. Gøtzsche and Asbjørn Hróbjartsson at the Nordic Cochrane Centre systematically reviewed three-armed randomised clinical trials involving true acupuncture, placebo acupuncture, or no acupuncture for pain. Thirteen trials (3,025 patients) were included. The authors conclude that the small analgesic effect of acupuncture seems to lack clinical relevance, and cannot be clearly distinguished from bias; and that it is unclear whether needling at acupuncture points, or at any site, causes pain reduction independent of the psychological impact of the treatment ritual. The study has been accepted for publication by the BMJ.
Update of Cochrane Review of the Effect of Placebo
Asbjørn Hróbjartsson and Peter C. Gøtzsche at the Nordic Cochrane Centre have updated their Cochrane review of the effect of placebo. The previous version of the review was published in 2004 and summarised data from 156 trials. The update includes 202 trials with 16570 patients and involves 60 clinical conditions. The review confirms and modifies the findings in the previous versions. The review is planned for publication in the Cochrane Library in 2009.
Research challenges current practice of advising workers on lifting techniques
The Cochrane Review on the effectiveness of training and lifting equipment for preventing back pain in lifting and handling by Kari-Pekka Martimo, Jos Verbeek, Jaro Karppinen, Andrea D Furlan, Esa-Pekka Takala,Paul Kuijer, Merja Jauhiainen and Eira Viikari-Juntura (CD005958) was also published as an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2008;336:429-31).
The review was developed as part of the Cochrane Occupational Health Field and financially supported by Safe Work Australia.
Six randomised trials and five cohort studies met the inclusion criteria. Two randomised trials and all cohort studies were labelled as high quality. Eight studies looked at lifting and moving patients, and three studies were conducted among baggage handlers or postal workers. Those in control groups received no intervention or minimal training, physical exercise, or use of back belts. None of the comparisons in randomised trials (17 720 participants) yielded significant differences. In a secondary analysis, none of the cohort studies (772 participants) had significant results, which supports the results of the randomised trials. It was concluded that there is no evidence to support use of advice or training in working techniques with or without lifting equipment for preventing back pain or consequent disability. The findings challenge current widespread practice of advising workers on correct lifting techniques.
The publication got press coverage in the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada. The main message conveyed by the press was 'handling and lifting technique training doesn't work'. Trainers commented that their training programmes were different from those in the review and that they still saw good results in practice. Researchers commented that better implementation of training techniques might still give better results. The debate will probably still continue.
Research highlights, podcasts
Wiley, our publisher, started in 2008 to ask authors of selected Cochrane reviews to record a podcast to be posted on the podcast homepage of the Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane.org/podcasts). The selected review have mostly been among the top-20 most accessed articles from the Cochrane Library on Wiley InterScience. The podcasts are usually written and recorded by the first author and last about 3-4 minutes. They are directed towards lay people, but one can click through to the Cochrane review from the podcast, which many people do. We recorded 3 podcasts in 2008 on reviews published by researchers at The Nordic Cochrane Centre:
- House dust mite control measures for asthma
- Regular self-examination or clinical examination for early detection of breast cancer
- Screening for breast cancer with mammography
These reviews are available on our website, www.cochrane.dk.
