OA Trial Bank

Objectives

1) To design and to reach consensus on the rules for cooperation in a consortium (ownership, authorship, permission procedures) and to reach consensus on the methods of searching available trials, assessing eligibility, method of pooling and meta-analysis of the individual patient data.

2) To perform the first meta-analysis with individual patient data: subgroup effect of intra-articular injection with corticosteroid in OA patients with (mild) inflammatory signs.

Design:

1. The OA trial bank is formalized by board members a chairman and an executive coordinator. During consensus meetings, rules and agreements on cooperation, ownership of data and methods applied, are discussed.

2. All randomized controlled trials evaluating one or more IA corticosteroid preparation in patients with OA of the knee or hip are included. All corresponding authors of eligible trials will be approached and asked to cooperate in this project. All randomized patients with a database record are entered in the central pooled database. A 1-stage approach will be used to analyze subgroup effects.