title: Methodological quality of systematic reviews and clinical trials on women's health published in a Brazilian evidence-based health journal.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the quality of systematic reviews and clinical trials on women's health recently published in a Brazilian evidence-based health journal.
  
  
  METHODS
  All systematic reviews and clinical trials on women's health published in the last five years in the Brazilian Journal of Evidence-based Health were retrieved. Two independent reviewers critically assessed the methodological quality of reviews and trials using AMSTAR and the Cochrane Risk of Bias Table, respectively.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Systematic reviews and clinical trials accounted for less than 10% of the 61 original studies on women's health published in the São Paulo Medical Journal over the last five years. All five reviews were considered to be of moderate quality; the worst domains were publication bias and the appropriate use of study quality in formulating conclusions. All three clinical trials were judged to have a high risk of bias. The participant blinding, personnel and outcome assessors and allocation concealment domains had the worst scores.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Most of the systematic reviews and clinical trials on women's health recently published in a Brazilian evidence-based journal are of low to moderate quality. The quality of these types of studies needs improvement.
authors.affiliation: Brazilian Cochrane Center, São Paulo/SP, Brazil.
authors.forename: Cristiane Rufino
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Macedo
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Riera
authors.forename: Maria Regina
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Torloni
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D001938:Brazil; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011643:Publishing / Q000592:standards*; D011786:Quality Control; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards; D012196:Review Literature as Topic; D016387:Women's Health