Reviewing the evidence for ME/CFS guidelines

Evidence review

NHMRC has rigorous standards in place to ensure that recommendations in clinical practice guidelines are based on the best available scientific evidence. Evidence review is the key step in identifying and assessing this evidence.

For the ME/CFS Clinical Practice Guidelines, NHMRC has recently procured the services of an external evidence reviewer who will carry out the following steps in consultation with the ME/CFS Guideline Development Committee (GDC) and NHMRC:

• Develop research questions that are relevant to the guidelines.
• Develop a research protocol, including a search strategy to find evidence relevant to the guideline.
• Evaluate the evidence to answer prioritised research questions (for example, through a systematic review or other approach).
• Assess the certainty of evidence using the GRADE framework.

While this process is underway, NHMRC will seek an external methodological reviewer to ensure that the research protocol and evidence evaluation are methodologically sound.

The ME/CFS GDC will work with the evidence reviewer to discuss each stage of the process and agree on the final set of research questions, the search strategy and the included studies. Decisions at each stage of the process will be documented, for transparency.

In addition to the GRADE approach, the GDC may 'adopt or ‘adapt’ evidence and recommendations from existing high-quality guidelines. This method enables the GDC to systematically determine whether recommendations from high-quality international guidelines can be directly adopted for Australian practice, whether those recommendations require adaptation to suit local contexts, or whether new recommendations based on unique local needs or gaps in available evidence need to be developed. 

This page will be updated as the ME/CFS guideline is developed. In the meantime, an overview of this process can be found at: Evidence review process for guidelines or advice.