Abstract
Purpose (the aim of the study): To facilitate strategic planning for a national response to the growing burden of osteoarthritis (OA) and its consequences, we conducted a comprehensive scoping review to identify the extent, range, and nature of contemporary research activity on OA in Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ).
Methods: We conducted a scoping review in accordance with the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guide and reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses – Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. The study protocol has been registered with the Open Science Framework [https://osf.io/cke8r].
The Population was a primary focus on OA in Humans; and animal model laboratory studies that are explicitly investigating mechanisms, causes or processes of OA in humans. The Concept was all studies with primary focus on OA, degenerative (non-rheumatoid) arthritis of joints affected by OA, degenerative changes (early- through to late-stage) of the joint structures involved in the osteoarthritis disease process (genetic, cartilage, subchondral bone, joint capsule, synovial fluid, skeletal muscle associated with the joint). The Context was studies conducted in AoNZ or with AoNZ-based authors, published between January 2000 and September 2023. Study types: All research article types and study designs. We excluded non-research article types, e.g.: editorials, commentaries, letters or replies to the editor, book reviews, errata, corrigenda, articles describing peoples’ ideas and theories, conference abstracts, narrative reviews.
The search strategy used the following databases to locate relevant studies: PubMed (MEDLINE), Web of Science, and CINAHL. Studies published in any language between January 2000 and September 2023 were searched. The keywords and operators used in the search included ("cartilage, articular"[MeSH Terms] OR "hyaline cartilage"[MeSH Terms] OR "osteoarthritis"[All Fields] OR "arthroplasty"[MeSH Terms] OR "joint registry"[Title/Abstract]) AND "new zealand"[Affiliation]).
All identified citations were uploaded into JabRef, duplicates removed, then uploaded to Rayyan, remaining duplicates removed, then titles, abstracts and full texts (if needed) were screened independently by two reviewers against the inclusion criteria. The studies were labeled according to research type (clinical trial, data study, epidemiology, guideline/consensus recommendations, lab science, observational/cohort study, qualitative/mixed methods, review). Disagreements were resolved with help of an additional reviewer.
Data were extracted from Rayan: year of publication, author, journal, and research classification labels. Author data were cleaned, inexact duplicates combined, and imported into VOSviewer for constructing and visualizing the AoNZ OA bibliometric co-authorship network. A narrative synthesis was produced separately for each research type.
Results: Database searches identified 2,838 studies. Following removal of duplicates (n = 1,029), 1809 studies were screened; 994 excluded; leaving 815 included studies (Fig. 1) among a diverse network of research authors (Fig. 2).
The largest number of studies were observational/cohort studies (n = 346) with a large share of these (n = 110) associated with the New Zealand Joint Registry, followed by lab science studies (n = 229), clinical trials (n = 90) and reviews (n = 77). The remaining types (epidemiology, data studies, guideline/consensus recommendations, qualitative and mixed methods) totalled to 73 publications.
Conclusions: The number of published studies in the OA field increased steeply over the study period, increasing from 3 publications in 2000 to 75 in 2020, which indicates increasing research capacity in AoNZ across diverse disciplines in the field of OA.