Stuber Marielle, Nentwig Wolfgang
Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Toxicon. 2016 May;114:40-4. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2016.02.023. Epub 2016 Feb 26.
We analyzed the reliability and information content of 134 medical case studies on spider bites, published in 91 journal articles. Overall, we found that only 22% of these studies fulfilled the criteria for a verified spider bite. This means that the majority of such case studies cannot be attributed to a given spider species and usually not even to a spider. Their scientific value is negligible, moreover, such publications are even dangerous because they suggest incorrect conclusions. Secondly, we found that such case studies usually do not follow an obvious structure and many details on the development of symptoms, therapy and healing process are widely lacking. So even for verified spider bites, the comparability of case studies is limited. We discuss the obvious failure of a reviewing process for case studies and give recommendations how to increase the currently low information content of medical case studies on spider bites.
我们分析了发表在91篇期刊文章中的134篇关于蜘蛛咬伤的医学案例研究的可靠性和信息内容。总体而言，我们发现这些研究中只有22%符合经证实的蜘蛛咬伤标准。这意味着此类案例研究中的大多数无法归因于某一特定蜘蛛种类，甚至通常都不能确定是蜘蛛所致。它们的科学价值微乎其微，此外，这类出版物甚至是危险的，因为它们会得出错误结论。其次，我们发现此类案例研究通常没有明显的结构，而且在症状发展、治疗和愈合过程的许多细节方面普遍缺失。所以即使对于经证实的蜘蛛咬伤案例，案例研究的可比性也是有限的。我们讨论了案例研究评审过程明显存在的不足，并给出了如何提高目前关于蜘蛛咬伤的医学案例研究中较低信息含量的建议。
