A META-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL REVIEW OF META-ANALYSIS ON ANTI-CARIES EFFECT OF ARGININE-CONTAINING FORMULATIONS

Background Several significant issues on clinical trials reporting the effect of arginine-containing dental products have been addressed in systematic reviews and meta-analyses identifying the need for high-quality randomized clinical trials. A further methodological analysis of the given systematic reviews with meta-analysis on arginine products might provide information for future high-quality randomized clinical trials and current clinical practice. Objective(s) The objective was to perform a meta-epidemiological assessment of meta-analyses reporting the anticaries effect of arginine-containing formulations. Methods The data on risk-of-bias assessment, effect size measure, dispersion of estimated precision, and follow-up period were summarized for the meta-epidemiological review analysis. Results Studies with larger magnitude of effect sizes might present with unclear random sequence generation and unclear allocation concealment representing the selection bias. There was a significant strong negative correlation between the follow-up time and dispersion of precision estimates (rs = 20.79, P = .034). Conclusion Results show that clinical trials on arginine dental products have methodological shortcomings. Both the selection bias and follow-up period influence the effect size magnitude and subsequent precision dispersion during evidence synthesis in clinical trials on arginine-containing dental products.