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New guidelines set standards for spinal experiments
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An international group of scientists has collaborated to develop a minimum information standard for spinal cord experimentation, its major elements and the approaches used to develop this experimentation, according to an article published recently in the Journal of Neurotrauma.
Vance P. Lemmon, MD, and colleagues worked together to develop the draft standard for spinal cord injuries, which they termed the Minimum Information About a Spinal Cord Injury (MIASCI).
Whereas the average minimum information standard has approximately 50 required data elements for a spinal cord injury experiment, the MIASCI has approximately 250 required data elements with the goal of encompassing the wide variety of design and analysis behind spinal cord injury experimentation.
“However, most [spinal cord injury] studies only cover a narrow range of these elements, and for a given study, the number of applicable data elements from the MIASCI is likely to be 100 or less,” Lemmon and colleagues wrote.
The new standards for experiments will hopefully reduce inherent bias and increase experimental values. Additionally, widespread use of the MIASCI will hopefully increase experimental accuracy, lab-to-lab reproducibility and help speed up therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injuries, according to the authors.
Disclosure: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.
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