Systematic reviews are powerful tools with the potential to generate high quality evidence. Their application to animal studies has been instrumental in exposing the poor quality of these studies, as well as a catalyst for improvements in study design, conduct and reporting. It has been suggested that prospective systematic reviews of animal studies (i.e. systematic reviews conducted prior to clinical trials) would allow scrutiny of the preclinical evidence, providing valuable information on safety and efficacy, and helping to determine whether clinical trials should proceed. However, while prospective systematic reviews allow valuable scrutiny of the preclinical animal data, they are not necessarily able to reliably predict the safety and efficacy of an intervention when trialled in humans. Consequently, they may not reliably safeguard humans participating in clinical trials and might potentially result in lost opportunities for beneficial clinical treatments. Furthermore, animal and human studies are often conducted concurrently, which not only makes prospective systematic reviews of animal studies impossible, but suggests that animal studies do not inform human studies in the manner presumed. We suggest that this points to a confused attitude regarding animal studies, whereby tradition demands that they precede human studies but practice indicates that their findings are often ignored. We argue that it is time to assess the relative contributions of animal and human research in order to better understand how clinical knowledge is actually produced.

中文翻译：

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动物研究的前瞻性系统评价能否改善临床翻译？

系统评价是强大的工具，有可能产生高质量的证据。它们在动物研究中的应用有助于揭露这些研究质量低下的问题，并有助于改进研究设计，进行和报告。已经提出，对动物研究的前瞻性系统评价（即在临床试验之前进行的系统评价）将允许对临床前证据进行仔细检查，提供有关安全性和有效性的宝贵信息，并有助于确定是否应进行临床试验。然而，尽管前瞻性的系统评价可以对临床前动物数据进行有价值的审查，但当在人体中进行试验时，它们不一定能够可靠地预测干预措施的安全性和有效性。所以，它们可能无法可靠地保护参与临床试验的人员，并可能导致丧失有益的临床治疗机会。此外，动物研究和人体研究通常是同时进行的，这不仅使得不可能对动物研究进行前瞻性的系统评价，而且表明动物研究并未以假定的方式为人类研究提供信息。我们建议，这表明对动物研究的态度混乱，传统上要求动物研究先于人类研究，但实践表明，他们的发现经常被忽略。我们认为现在是时候评估动物和人类研究的相对贡献，以便更好地了解临床知识是如何实际产生的。