title: Systematic review of clinical practice guidelines related to multiple sclerosis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  High quality clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) can provide clinicians with explicit recommendations on how to manage health conditions and bridge the gap between research and clinical practice. Unfortunately, the quality of CPGs for multiple sclerosis (MS) has not been evaluated.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the methodological quality of CPGs on MS using the AGREE II instrument.
  
  
  METHODS
  According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we searched four databases and two websites related to CPGs, including the Cochrane library, PubMed, EMBASE, DynaMed, the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), and Chinese Biomedical Literature database (CBM). The searches were performed on September 20th 2013. All CPGs on MS were evaluated by the AGREE II instrument. The software used for analysis was SPSS 17.0.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 27 CPGs on MS met inclusion criteria. The overall agreement among reviews was good or substantial (ICC was above 0.70). The mean scores for each of all six domains were presented as follows: scope and purpose (mean ± SD: 59.05 ± 16.13), stakeholder involvement (mean ± SD: 29.53 ± 17.67), rigor of development (mean ± SD: 31.52 ± 21.50), clarity of presentation (mean ± SD: 60.39 ± 13.73), applicability (mean ± SD: 27.08 ± 17.66), editorial independence (mean ± SD: 28.70 ± 22.03).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The methodological quality of CPGs for MS was acceptable for scope, purpose and clarity of presentation. The developers of CPGs need to pay more attention to editorial independence, applicability, rigor of development and stakeholder involvement during the development process. The AGREE II instrument should be adopted by guideline developers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Chuang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Weiping
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The Third People's Hospital of Chengdu, Chengdu, PR China.
authors.forename: Guanghui
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Jinzhou
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Tianzhu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Cindy Si
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, PR China.
authors.forename: Xinyue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qin
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D046609:Libraries, Digital; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000628:therapy*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D039781:PubMed