Biological variation database: structure and criteria used for generation and update

Abstract

Our aim here is to document, in detail, the methodology we used to evaluate the reliability of the included data compiled from the published literature. To date, our approach has not been explicitly documented, although the principles have been presented at many symposia, courses and conferences.

A checklist for critical appraisal of studies of biological variation

“…Reviews of BVD available for a range of analytical targets highlight many issues in study designs and reporting [10][11][12]. This provides a major challenge to users trying to translate the content of individual publications into practice and to those attempting to collate valid data sets into databases for use by multiple users [17]. The problems associated with, and the needs for standardisation of, terminology used in publications of BV studies have also been highlighted by Simundic et al [13].…”

“…The concept of scoring publications containing BVD has been described by Perich et al [17]. It is proposed by the BVWG that a more sophisticated score should be included in the MDS to accompany BVD as a quality measure to further aid to users as a quality measure [18].…”

“…Attempts to make BVD accessible to laboratory medicine specialists have resulted in the delivery of a biological variation data base by Ricós and colleagues which is currently hosted online [14][15][16]. The criteria they used to construct the database have been published recently [17]. The authors recognised that there is a need to further develop criteria to better characterise BVD and enable selection of BVD from publications for inclusion in their database.…”

Reliability of biological variation data available in an online database: need for improvement

“…Where multiple publications are available the database entry represents a median value of those published [9]. Figure 2 shows the distribution of 247 papers stratified by years of publication included in the database and used in order to calculate BV data.…”

“…It is extensive and presents data and derived analytical quality specifications for imprecision (I%), bias (B%) and total error (TE%) for more than 350 measurands. It is however, only recently that Perich et al have published criteria used to evaluate the reliability of the data included in the BV-DB [9].…”