Using Preprints in Evidence Synthesis: Commentary on experience during the COVID-19 pandemic Barbara Clyne et al. Introduction SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has rapidly spread, causing millions of cases and deaths globally. Controlling the COVID-19 pandemic requires swift decision making based on initially sparse, and rapidly emerging evidence. There has been a proliferation of…
HOW COVID BROKE THE EVIDENCE PIPELINE The pandemic stress-tested the way the world produces evidence — and revealed all the flaws. By Helen Pearson I t wasn’t long into the pandemic before Simon Carley realized we had an evidence problem. It was early 2020, and COVID-19 infections were starting to lap at the shores of…
Probiotics: To Use or Not to Use? That Is the Question Max Schmulson Abstract This Editorial analyzes the paper by Schnadower et al on the secondary analysis of 2 randomized placebo-controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, and a combination of L. rhamnosus R0011 and L. helveticus R0052, showing that moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis symptoms…
Gut as viral reservoir: lessons from gut viromes, HIV and COVID-19 Markus F Neurath et al. Background: viruses in the healthy gut The gut microbiota is composed of bacteria, fungi and viruses.1–3 While the presence and composition of the bacteriome have been extensively studied in recent years, the ‘dark matter’ of microbiomes including viruses (viral microbiome…
Mortality outcomes with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in COVID-19 from an international collaborative meta-analysis of randomized trials Cathrine Axfors, Andreas M. Schmitt. Substantial COVID-19 research investment has been allocated to randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine, which currently face recruitment challenges or early discontinuation. We aim to estimate the effects of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine on survival…
Bayesian Statistics of Efficacy of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine — part II Reproducing original results Bartek Skorulski Part II (this post) Reproducing statistics from the article Additional parameter θ Prior distribution of θ and an adjustment of occurrences Credible Interval for posterior Vaccine Efficacy COVID-19 occurrence in participants with and those without prior evidence of infection…