Meta-analysis topic ideas in infectious diseases

Infectious diseases evidence ages fast. New resistance patterns, new vaccines and outbreaks change the questions that matter, and a review can be outdated within a few years.

Many good topics are practical, such as how long to treat, when to switch to oral therapy, or how to prevent infection after a procedure.

Find a infectious diseases topic that has not been done

SynthGap searches the published literature, checks each candidate against existing systematic reviews, and proposes topics with the primary studies behind them. The free plan includes 3 discovery runs a month.

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Where gaps tend to hide in infectious diseases

Treatment duration

Short versus long antibiotic courses are tested infection by infection, and each infection can have enough trials for its own review.

Oral versus intravenous therapy

Early switch trials exist for many infections and are often not pooled by infection site.

Prophylaxis

Antibiotic prophylaxis around specific procedures and in specific patient groups is studied in many small trials.

Stewardship and implementation

Interventions that change prescribing behaviour are varied and hard to pool, so tightly defined questions can be new.

Resource-limited settings

Treatments for malaria, tuberculosis and diarrhoeal disease are tested where the baseline risk and drug resistance differ.

Vaccine schedules and special groups

Schedule changes and responses in immunocompromised patients are narrower questions that may not yet be pooled.

Outcomes and effect measures that pool well in infectious diseases

Clinical cure at a test-of-cure visit: risk ratio. Be careful, since the definition of cure and the timing vary between trials.
Microbiological eradication: risk ratio, kept separate from clinical cure.
All-cause mortality at a fixed time (for example 28 or 30 days): risk ratio.
Relapse or recurrence: risk ratio over a stated follow-up.
Adverse events, including Clostridioides difficile infection and antibiotic resistance emerging during treatment, are worth pooling separately.

Common traps in infectious diseases reviews

Non-inferiority trials use different margins. Pooling them needs a consistent margin and a clear view of what counts as acceptable.
Intention-to-treat and per-protocol results can disagree in non-inferiority trials. Report which you used.
Local resistance patterns change effects. A drug that works where resistance is rare may not work elsewhere.
Fast-moving topics need a plan for updates. Consider whether a living review is a better fit.

Check before you commit

Before committing months to a topic, check that nobody has beaten you to it. Search PubMed with its systematic review filter, the Cochrane Library, the PROSPERO register (for reviews that are registered but not yet published) and Epistemonikos. Look at how recent the latest review is and whether new trials have appeared since its search date. Step-by-step guide.

Starting points to try in SynthGap

These are areas to explore, not claims that they are open. Some may already be well covered, and finding that out quickly is the point.

Seven versus fourteen days of antibiotics for gram-negative bacteraemia
Early oral switch in bone and joint infection
Antibiotic prophylaxis before a specific surgical procedure

Questions

What kind of infectious diseases topic is least likely to be done already?

Narrow, practical questions: one infection, one duration comparison, one patient group. Broad questions such as antibiotics versus placebo usually have several reviews.

How do I deal with non-inferiority trials in a meta-analysis?

Check that the trials used comparable margins, analyse the outcome against the margin as well as the point estimate, and show intention-to-treat and per-protocol results separately.

How often does an infectious diseases review need updating?

Often. If the field is moving quickly, plan for an update or a living review, and state the search date clearly.

Other specialties

This page is general methodological guidance, not medical advice, and it does not list specific unreviewed topics. SynthGap's suggestions are AI-generated from the published literature, so verify them before registering a protocol.