Systematic reviews of epidemiology in diabetes: finding the evidence

Abstract

Our results show that when searching for articles on diabetes epidemiology, MEDLINE and Embase would suffice for English language papers, with LILACS giving some additional non-English articles from Latin America. Although a MEDLINE-only search will retrieve the vast majority of the relevant literature, Embase and LILACs should also be searched to ensure the search is comprehensive. Searching for meeting abstracts is recommended to alert reviewers to unpublished work. The low rate of full publication of meeting abstracts has the danger of producing bias in reviews. Our findings on scattering show that the core literature in this field is concentrated in just six journals.