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

Abstract

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 = −0.79, 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.